


Seven Minutes in Heaven

by ladyofbrileith



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bass Has a Plan, Bass isn't quite right, Beauty and the Beast Elements, But y'all know that, Eventual shamless smut, Everyone thinks Bass is worse than he is, F/F, Kidnapping, M/M, Mild sexual coercion early on, Mildly Dubious Consent, Miles is kinda clueless, Mind Games, Slow Build, So he's gonna use that to his advantage, libraries make the best gifts (sort of)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-05-31 02:25:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6451804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyofbrileith/pseuds/ladyofbrileith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four years ago, Miles Matheson tried to kill Sebastian Monroe and then abandoned him for, as far as Bass can tell, no good reason at all. Now, Charlie Matheson has unexpectedly dropped in his lap, stared down his pet torturer and captured Bass's attention. What's a heart-broken dictator to do? Obviously, there's only one option. Bass steals her away to an isolated location and makes her a deal: if she agrees to play a modified version of an old party game with him every day until Miles finds them, then Bass will (1) keep her brother safe and (2) let her go when Miles arrives. </p><p>That is, of course, if she still wants to leave by then.  </p><p>(And if Miles doesn't kill him the moment he finds them, which, given what Bass is about to put the other man through to exact his revenge for Miles' betrayal, might be a distinct possibility.)</p><p>Canon-divergent from 01x10.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Naughty List

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning: this is going to be a slow build, physically, but, hopefully, when the smut comes, it will be worth the wait! Warning for psychological manipulation and coerced consent to kissing, but Bass's aim is seduction, not rape, and Charlie's consent to anything more will be freely given.

Bass stands, transfixed, as Charlotte stares down Strausser, gaze unflinching, so willing to put herself in harm’s way for her family. He respects that, admires it, identifies with it, even.

It’s also the hottest fucking thing he’s ever seen (and he’s pretty experienced at appreciating hot things).

He has a plan, he reminds himself; maybe the plan lacks a great deal of foresight, but it makes up for that in thought. Thinking is all he’s been able to do since he got Tom’s message about bringing the boy, all he’s managed since he found out Miles was on his way. That thought just keeps echoing, day and night: _Miles is on his way._ You’d think he was fucking Santa Claus and Bass was still eight and terribly concerned about whether or not his and Miles’ ditching Ben in the forest way back in July (look, six months was a _lifetime_ at eight) had landed him on the “Naughty” list. But, nevertheless, the refrain bounces off the walls and among the shards of shattered lives in his brain: _Miles is on his way._

Except, really, today, it should shift to something more along the lines of _Miles’s coming tonight, tonight_ (he’d prefer if it picked up the more classic _So let’s give thanks to the Lord above / ‘Cause Miles is coming tonight_ , though that carries that frisson of dread even farther, because it must, of course, shift to the more ominous _Jump in bed, cover up your head / ‘Cause Miles is coming tonight,_ and Bass has better things to do in bed than cover up his head should Miles show up; though, given that the last time the other man graced his bedroom in the middle of the night had been less than pleasant, hiding under the covers has a certain appeal)

(Observe again, exhibit A, Naughty List, above)

(But, no, he lets his thoughts get stuck in this ridiculous loop, whilst trying very hard not to grab one Charlotte Matheson, back her into that wall behind her and fuck her senseless, and ends up with the words zinging along to Spongebob Squarepants’ song and its annoying as fuck repetitive “Jingle Bells” tune over and over and over again…and in Angie’s voice, because, dear God, his youngest sister had loved that stupid song).

It seems highly likely that he’s missed part of the conversation, but mostly it appears Rachel’s just freaking out, and he will be so fucking glad when he can finally kill her.

His plan verges on the edge between fruition and collapse. Stay the course; Miles harps on that all the time, commitment to a goal, trying to keep Bass from losing focus ( _Bass! Focus_ , and Miles’ voice momentarily drowns out Angie’s, thank whoever listens to the prayers of the fallen). Before he lets himself ask _“What would Lucifer do?”_ and return to contemplating just what Charlotte’s legs would feel like wrapped around him and the correlated inquiry as to whether she’s ever wrapped them around anyone before (which, let’s be honest, finding the answer to both of those is probably exactly what Lucifer would do) he tells the ghost of Miles’ admonition to fuck off. Not like Miles followed his own advice, did he?

Miles ran away; Bass can change his plans.

He keys back in as Rachel gives in. Charlotte shoots her a look as full of disgust as Bass often feels, though he suspects their reasons may be different, and the knot that had tightened at his core, worried he’d miscalculated with the elder Matheson woman and would have to follow through on his threat loosens. He needs to keep her compliant, though—Rachel, not Charlotte—and gleefully tosses out the instruction he’d planned to give.

He gestures for one of the guards to come forward, instructing him, “Bring the girl to my office,” then looks back at Rachel as he gives Strausser the order. “If Rachel even breathes wrong, kill the boy.”

Rachel’s eyes widen as the soldier grabs Charlotte’s arm and tugs her out of the line of Strausser’s gun, then fill with alarm, followed by understanding. “You son of a bitch…” Her launch toward him is abruptly stopped, though, as Strausser turns the gun on Danny. “Bass…please, don’t…”

Charlotte’s struggle aborts just as quickly when Strausser’s gun moves, terror flashing through her implacable resolve and Bass glances between the three of them. “I see we understand each other. Your children will be fine, Rachel, so long as you do what you’ve promised. I give you my word.”

He smirks slightly, letting her interpret “fine” as she wants, then turns on his heel and leaves, gesturing for the guard to bring Charlotte after him.

*          *          *

Charlie’s heart thunders loud enough that she worries the seemingly implacable President will be able to hear it and call her out on her bravado. Fury and fear both rage, though less for herself than for Danny, left behind with Strausser. Miles’ words about the man echo through her head and it’s all she can do not to attack the young guard tugging her along (she could take him, she knows she could) and run back to her brother. Something tells her, however, that would only endanger Danny more.

Still, she struggles against the hold on her arm, to show she isn’t cowed, though neither the guard nor the President give her struggles much mind.

The office she’s dragged into isn’t exactly what she expected, but they are at a power plant, after all. She supposes she can’t expect anything too formal.  Then again, the President isn’t quite what she expected, either. Nora said he and Miles grew up together, but Monroe looks younger, less world-worn. His eyes are as clear and blue as her own, though cold, she tells herself, making it an assessment of an enemy, not an admiration of color and clarity.

Though her focus had been on Strausser, she hadn’t missed the way Monroe watched her any more than she’d missed the frisson of awareness the avidity of his gaze sent through her. When he’d given his order, she’d looked to him in surprise, and felt the shock of the fervid hunger in that gaze ricochet around her brain and body both. No one had ever looked at her that way. She’d never seen _anyone_ look at someone that way, but it was raw and primal, and she’s been breathing funny ever since.

“Leave us.”

The guard lets her go, stepping out of the room and closing the door softly behind him, and Charlie’s gaze darts around the office—anywhere but on the slim figure in front of her--looking for a weapon or an escape or just to avoid the intensity of the way he’s looking at her once more.

“You wouldn’t get a hundred yards before someone grabbed you again.” His voice is calm, maybe even a little amused. “And if you attack me, your brother will be dead before you can get to him. So...” He turns away to move behind his desk, sorting through some papers. “As neither of us wants that, why don’t you make yourself comfortable? I need to take care of a couple of things, and then we’ll go…”

Who can deliver threats so politely? The short laugh that escapes her lips surprises her—seems to surprise him, too, given the way his head lifts back up to look at her. “If you don’t want to hurt him, you shouldn’t threaten him.”

The smile that flickers over Monroe’s lips is almost sad. “If everyone would just be reasonable and cooperate, I wouldn’t need to threaten him, but eight years of your mother’s refusal to do anything to help the world has led to the need for drastic measures. That doesn’t mean I want to take them; but I am willing to.”

Charlie bites back the questions about her mother in favor of the more pressing one. “Where are you taking me?”

Monroe settles behind his desk, flipping through some papers, then reaching for blank sheets and a pen, making notes across its surface she can’t quite see. “Hmmm?”

“You said you had to do something, then we’d go. Go where?”

“Back into Philly to start.”

“And then?” Because that certainly didn’t sound like a final destination.

“And then…we’ll see.” He glances up and gives her a smile that makes her want to snap at him to stop it, because the devil shouldn’t have an angel’s smile. It’s not right, and why the hell is she even noticing?  

“Miles will be looking for me…”

“I’m counting on it.” The reply is absent, and she almost finds herself annoyed that after all his intensity, he’s suddenly paying minimal attention to her, back to scratching out his notes. His complete lack of concern with the possibility of any threat she poses is equally insulting.

“What are you going to do to me?” She thinks she knows, feels the fear of it twist inside her, along with something she refuses to acknowledge, and hates that this time she’s got no idea if anyone is coming, at least in time.

His lips curve in a bit of a smile, and he glances up at her again, and the heat in his gaze makes her wonder how she ever thought it was cold or him unattentive. “That depends utterly on you, Charlotte.”

It sounds like both a threat and a promise, and her throat goes dry. Given her quick glance around the room offered no easy weapon or escape route, she finally moves to sink into a chair, watching him carefully for any aggressive movement. He calls for a guard once, handing him a note without looking up, telling him to deliver it to Captain Baker, and Charlie glances out the open door only to see several guards in the hallway. No way out that way, then, not without a gun and eliminating the President who’d be behind her and if even one of them gets away, Danny’s as good as dead. She settles back moodily in the chair as the guard leaves.

Monroe continues to ignore her and time stretches out; maybe it’s only a few minutes, but to her mind, it feels like forever. When the door opens again, it’s the captain they held briefly captive with the rebels, and she shoots him a dark look of dislike that makes him smirk at her.

“Hello again, Miss Matheson.” She refuses to answer, which only seems to amuse him more. Monroe glances between them, then gestures at her. “Give it to her, and take her to the wagon. Then I have a list for you…”

The blond soldier moves across the room with purpose, and Charlie tenses. When she sees the syringe in his hand, however, she jumps to her feet, panic shouting warnings in her head. He catches her easily, and she looks to Monroe, only to find the damn man writing again. “Please…”

“If you struggle, it’s only going to hurt,” the captain tells her. “Just relax…”

She lashes out, but feels the needle sink into her neck. A sour taste hits the back of her throat, and she lets out a sob of frustration and fear, but whatever they’ve given her works fast, and before she can do more than that, the world goes black.

*          *          *

After Jeremy takes Charlotte out of the office and puts her in the wagon bound for Philly—one with seemingly nothing remotely interesting in it, should it happen to pass Miles on the way back—Bass finishes the instructions he’s been furiously scribbling out, everything he needs to put this new, mad (but epic) plan into place. He estimates the likelihood of it working as pretty damn low, but better it than some showdown here with Miles, or being here if and when Miles finds Rachel’s here: he really should have thought that one through a little better; he can admit that now.

Probably, he should think this one through a little more, too, but he’s always done his best (in his own mind) when improvising. Miles does careful strategy; Bass makes it up as he goes. If nothing else, he knows it challenges Miles to predict how and what he might do, and right now, he needs that on his side. Miles won’t see this coming, not at first. (Maybe not ever without help, he'll have to work that in to the plan, before he goes.) He’ll think the worst, fall for the play, and that will give Bass the time he needs.

Done writing out his instructions, he smiles to himself and slips out of the power plant a back way, making sure everyone thinks he’s still there: the more time he can buy while Miles hunts for him and Charlie out here, the better.

If this fails, it will do so spectacularly, and he’ll probably end up dead. (Not like he hasn't almost ended it himself a dozen times since Miles disappeared; Jeremy's taken to hiding the knives when he starts drinking.)  If it succeeds, he’ll have everything he ever wanted: the power on, Miles home, and that amazing girl willingly in his bed. They’ll rule it all, just like he and Miles used to talk about, and he’ll be better with both of them by his side. (Miles always makes everything better; he has a feeling the girl might have that skill, too.)  Miles will see how wrong he was, ever to leave; won’t ever do so again. (The _"how could you do that to me, Miles?"_ echoes through his dreams every night, making his sleep restless and uneasy.) Even the smallest chance of having that is worth any risk of failure or death. He’s only been half-alive these last four years anyway.

No more half-assed gestures; if Miles is going to put him on his Naughty List, Bass might as well earn it. 


	2. Hey, Patty Garrett

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miles manages to rescue Rachel and Danny, but finds out Bass has taken Charlie. When Jeremy lays out the bargain, Miles has a choice to make--will he play Bass's game or start one of his own?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay with this! Life intervened. But I'm publishing chapter 2 and 3 at once (I got on a roll!), so hopefully I can be forgiven! :-) 
> 
> This chapter dances through everyone (Bass, Danny and Jeremy POVs), setting the game fully in motion, but chapter 3 is all Bass and Charlie!

The news that the amplifier works reaches Bass in Independence Hall as he finishes up the last of the preparations.

“Miles?” He sends Jeremy a questioning look.

“At the power plant, sir, as expected, and looking for the girl. We’ve got him pinned down, for the moment.”

Bass smiles slightly to himself. “Make sure at least one of them sees the decoys get in the helicopters. You know what to do from there.”

“So long as he doesn’t shoot me on sight, sir.” A glance across the room gets Bass a sardonic smile to go along with the dry comment.

“Miles isn’t that stupid. He won’t kill the only person who can tell him where I’m taking the girl.”

Jeremy mutters something under his breath that Bass pretends not to hear, then speaks up again. “He’s walked all the way from Chicago—what makes you think he’ll leave the boy behind?”

Bass sighs and moves across the room, resting a hand on Jeremy’s shoulder. “Because you’re going to make it very, very clear what will happen if he takes him. And remind Miles how he taught me never to bluff.”

“Even though you’re bluffing?”

A slow smile curved Bass’s lips. “Am I?”

The uncertainty that flickers through Jeremy’s eyes should be gratifying, but, instead, it stings a little. Miles may have told them never to bluff, but that doesn’t mean Bass doesn’t do it from time to time. Jeremy should know that, unless Jeremy’s buying in to the growing sentiment regarding Bass’s stability which would be just…disappointing.

“I’ll get it done, sir. What about Rachel?”

Bass makes a face and shrugs, moving to the door. “He can take her if he wants her; if he doesn’t, feel free to do whatever you like with her. She’s done what we need her to.” He shoots Jeremy another smile. “I’ll be in touch.”

*          *          *

Danny Matheson feels like a failure. He got his father killed. He got himself taken and never managed to successfully escape. His sister came all this way to rescue him, only when they were threatened, he was too slow, again. He couldn’t save his father; he couldn’t protect his sister; and now Monroe could be doing anything to her. His mother’s pallor suggests she might have a very good idea what that is, and Danny’s skin crawls as his stomach twists.

When Rachel finished the amplifier, they moved them to another cell in the power plant, one with a window overlooking a wide expanse of grass. Danny’s not sure if it’s meant to be a kindness or a taunt, but he stands at the window, staring out at the stretch of green flowing outward, trying not to think about what Charlie’s going through but unable to think of anything else.

Rachel paces behind him, all nervous energy. She keeps telling him that Charlie will be fine, that Bass is just making a point. The word spill out, nonsensical in her babbling reassurance about snowmen and storybooks and how Monroe always liked Charlie. Danny can’t even process through that now, that this far-removed figure (though not so far-removed from Charlie right now) somehow winds through their history, the past Danny’s too young to remember.

Sound reverberates through the air, louder than anything he can remember hearing, a physical thing he can feel pressing against his skin, pulsing in his blood. He has no word for the two things that land on the grass, bulbous on one end, narrowing into a tail that reminds him of nothing so much as a whale (he’s seen pictures) or a teardrop. Blades spin on the top, slowing as the things settle, though they don’t stop, and the grass flattens out from the wind they generate at the same rate as the pulsing cacophony he can hear and feel.

His mother crowds next to him at the window, fingers pressing against the glass, and Danny slides her a sideways glance.

“Helicopters.” She gives him the word, but doesn’t say anything else, not right away.

A door opens on the far end of the building perpendicular to their own, and Danny sees the blond man from before—Captain Baker, he thinks—emerge, followed by Monroe. The helicopters block a clean view of his face, but Danny remembers the way he moves, can see the wind from the two helicopters causing blond curls to defy whatever he’d had them tamed with before. Strausser follows, and Rachel’s knuckles go white when she sees the girl he carries. Her jacket is ripped along one trailing arm, her blond hair tangled, and she hangs limp in the Sergeant’s arms, clearly unconscious, with her head tucked against his shoulder.

Monroe and Strausser, still holding Charlie, board one of the helicopters, and Rachel moves, palm banging flat on the glass that separates them from the scene.

“No! Charlie! No!”

Danny’s breath is coming too quickly, her panic infusing his own as she continues to bang on the glass, screaming at it like they can hear her or would heed her if they could, but the machines lurch unsteadily from the ground, wobbling in a way that makes Danny’s stomach twist up in fear all over again. Rachel’s sobs provide an underlying counterpoint as the noise picks up pace again, faster and faster, like his breath, like his heartbeat, until the helicopters are in the air, rising steadily, then flying off together and disappearing over the trees. Like Danny, Captain Baker watches them, then glances once at the window from which they watch. For a moment, Danny thinks he sees a flicker of pity, before the man turns and walks back into the building.

Minutes or hours later, their cell door bursts open, and a man Danny doesn’t recognize stands there, staring at them, confused.

“Rachel…?”

She looks less dumbfounded than he—probably since Charlie had told them he was coming—though all she musters at first is an answer to another of Danny’s unspoken questions:  “Miles.”

His dark gaze sweeps past her after a moment, taking in Danny, then the empty room, and his confusion hardens to something else. “Where’s Charlie?”

“Bass took her.” Rachel’s tears have dried to dullness, and Danny wants to hear all the things that are passing between his mother and the uncle he doesn’t know, but he can’t interpret their looks.

“Damn it!” Whatever bemusement Miles might have had to begin with is gone, replaced by the same flicker of panic Danny had seen in his mother’s eyes with the President had Charlie dragged out. “Please tell me you mean he put her in another cell, separated you.”

Rachel shook her head. “He said he was taking her back to Philly, but…”

Unable to stand silent, Danny pushes forward. “But he just put her in one of those helicopters and flew off with her.”

Miles curses again, his grip hardening on the sword he holds—one Danny’s seen every militia soldier carrying, a fact he files away.

“We need to find her, now. Come on.” It’s sharp, an order, and without another glance, Miles turns, leaving the door open and expecting them to follow.

Rachel stands, uncertain, but Danny moves, fast, after the man. “The captain might know. He’s still here…”

“Jeremy?”

Danny shrugs, unsure of the man’s first name if he ever even heard it, but his mother’s voice comes from behind him. “Yes. He’s still here—other wing.”

One nod, and Miles heads that way, not needing further directions. Another thing to file away, Danny thinks.

*          *          *

Jeremy’s expecting them, perching on the edge of the desk, when the door to Bass’s makeshift office bangs open. He’s gotten into the whiskey, figuring if he’s about to die, well, then, Bass owes him a final drink. If he’s not about to die, then he still owes him for leaving him to deal with this shit.

“Miles.” Despite the drawn sword, Jeremy keeps his voice mild, unconcerned. It doesn’t do to show fear and so on and so forth. He takes a sip of his whiskey. “I was starting to think you’d never get here.”

Miles is across the room in a heartbeat, fingers in Jeremy’s collar, sword at his neck, body pressed close and Jeremy tries very hard not to react, though he can’t help the smirk that curls his lips. “If you’re wanting a proper hello, you might want to ditch the audience.”

The low growl in the back of Miles’ throat tells him not to push his luck. “Where is she?”

“I won’t insult you by asking who you mean.” He doesn’t fight Miles’ hold, just sets the whiskey aside carefully—it’s too good to waste. “And the answer is…I don’t know. Somewhere over a Pennsylvania field, I suspect. Hopefully she doesn’t wake up and try to rush the cockpit.”

“Let me rephrase: where is he taking her?”

Jeremy snorts. “Yeah, it’s not worth my life to tell you that…”

“Right now—I’m far more of a threat to your life than Bass.”

“Not when I’m the _only_ one who knows where they’re going, when I’m the only one he’ll communicate with or negotiate through. Kill me and by the time you find her, she’ll be dead.” He pushes, then, his hand on Miles’ to move the blade away as he straightens deliberately into the other man, until Miles is the one who falls back from the ghost of remembered intimacy. Jeremy allows himself to feel the flicker of disappointment, but only for a moment.

“Negotiate?” Miles' beautiful brown eyes narrow and Jeremy lets himself enjoy the calculation running through them as Miles finally catches up. “She’s his new hostage. What does he want?”

“Well, sort of.” Jeremy waves a hand. “You should have seen the way he looked at her, though. Between you and me, I’m not sure he was really _thinking,_ at least not with the right head. As for what he wants—I suspect the answer is her, even if that’s not the official line.” He has the satisfaction of watching Miles’ jaw tighten, seeing the way he considers punching Jeremy and recognizing the moment he decides not to.

“Get to the point. You’re obviously here to deliver a message. Deliver it.”

“He wants you to come after them. You can take Rachel, if you want. You’ll leave the boy behind.”

“No!”

Jeremy ignores Rachel, keeping his gaze on Miles.

“To what end? To offer myself up to save her?”

“Maybe. I honestly don’t know what his plan is—he says he wants to talk, that he has a proposition for you. Maybe that’s it. I told you—he’s been more and more erratic. All I know for certain is that he’ll be in touch, and I’m to tell you to, basically, catch them if you can.” He reaches for the whiskey again, taking a sip, just in case. “If I don’t respond to his messages, he’ll kill her. If I tell him you took the boy, he’ll kill her. Otherwise…well. I suggest you run after them quickly. He’s taken Strausser. If she gives him any trouble, he’s just as likely to give her to the sergeant as he is to decide to let her replace you.”

Miles stares at him, horror and disgust in his eyes, and Jeremy feels a bit of regret for putting him through this, but, honestly, Miles deserves a little punishment. On that, he and Bass completely agree, and the vindictive flicker soothes the old wound of betrayal.

“We’re not leaving the boy.” Miles’ voice is firm, and Jeremy can see Rachel clutching at her son.

“Not even to save the girl? I promise—he won’t be harmed. Well, unless she breaks the rules Monroe’s set for her. Mutual insurance factors—he stays, she lives; she behaves, he lives; you behave, they both live.” Jeremy tilts his head, gaze not wavering from Miles’. “I give you my word, Miles. I’m supposed to put him up in your old quarters, make sure the doctor sees him for any injuries he got coming here and keeps an eye on his asthma. He’ll be fed and safe, and no one will lay a hand on him, so long as everyone sticks to the script.”

“What else? There’s always something else.”

Jeremy shrugs and sighs. “That’s all I know. He wants to talk—you find him, you talk. Whatever he wants, he’ll tell you, then.” He holds up his free hand, the other still curved around the whiskey. “I’m just the messenger and babysitter.”

Miles tears his gaze away, looking to Rachel, who looks back at him, her grip tightening on Danny like she’ll pull him out of there and damn the consequences to Charlie.

In the end, they go; no violence, for once.

Jeremy pours himself another glass of whiskey, hesitates, and then pours one for Danny, too.

*          *          *

It’s easy enough to follow the path of the helicopters—no one’s seen anything but birds in the sky for so long, everyone marks their direction: west. So, Miles, Rachel, Aaron and Nora go west.

On the east side of Philly, at Penn’s Landing, a nondescript sloop pushes back from the docks and into the Delaware River. The single sailor at the helm wears a hat, pulled low to cover blond curls and shadow too-blue eyes. Below deck, a young woman with honey blonde hair nestles in a cozy bed with blankets and pillows in a cabin otherwise full of supplies, and sleeps on.


	3. Just Love Me, Fear Me, Do as I Say, and I Will...(Oh, you know how it goes)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bass has successfully spirited Charlie out of Philly. She's realizing she's on her own and that, until help can arrive, she's got to play Bass's game to survive. But when he lays out that game, it's not exactly what she expects. She's determined she'll win, but he's just as sure of his own victory. One of them has probably already lost, though who and how remains to be seen.

Charlie wakes up slowly, the drug in her system wearing off while the rocking of the boat and the comfort of the bed lull her into a more natural sleep. The sun filtering in through the porthole plays over her face, finally pulling her to consciousness. For a few moments, she just lays there, trying to put together where she is, what happened. Then memory returns in a flood: her capture, the reunion with Danny, the discovery her mother was alive, the amplifier, Strausser and his gun, the blue of Sebastian Monroe’s eyes as his gaze devoured her, the flare of fear and the prick of the needle.

Jerking upright, she slaps her hand to her neck, finding the sore spot there. The abrupt movement makes her stomach lurch, but she takes a breath to quell the nausea and looks around. The berth is settled into the “V” under the foredeck, two portholes on either side, and warm wood paneling lines the walls down the length toward the aft. She can see the steps leading up to the deck, though the door is currently closed, and another nestles under it. Boxes are lashed to the walls, though a table and seating remain clear for use. She can see fruit and bread sitting on it, with a piece of paper stuck underneath.

The berth is big enough for two, if barely, and her gaze takes in the second pillow next to hers and the indentation in the center of it. Stomach twisting and nausea returning, she glances down, but beyond her boots and jacket, her clothing is all still on and doesn’t seem anymore displaced than usual for sleeping in it. A quick look shows her boots sitting by the door to the deck. Further inspection yields a canteen tucked into a cubbyhole. Though she hesitates, fearing more drugs, whatever he’d given her before has left her throat dry and she gives in, drinking thirstily. When no grogginess sets in, she cautiously climbs to her knees to peer through the portholes, heart sinking as she sees nothing but water out one and only a hazy strip of land out the other. Resigned to the fact that just jumping off the boat isn’t going to be feasible, she gets up to face the day and find out what might be.

The door next to the stairs hides a toilet and sink, both of which she uses before coming back to the table, half expecting Monroe to barge in at any point (because, clearly, that’s who has to have her, right? Unless maybe Miles rescued her and they escaped by boat? Somehow that doesn’t seem likely). The note on the table quashes any hope she's mustered for that, though. She reads it as she reaches for the food, nibbling on the bread in hopes it will help further settle her stomach.

_When you’re ready, come up on deck. ~ SM_

Charlie isn’t sure she’ll ever be ready, but the sun streaming in makes the cabin almost too warm, and, with a deep breath, she tugs on her boots, then opens the door and makes her way up on deck.

Even though she’s prepared to see Monroe there, she’s startled when she realizes he’s the _only_ one there, and she takes a few heartbeats to watch him. He’s lost the uniform, dressed now in faded black pants and a blue t-shirt. The wind off the water has blown his curls awry, and when he glances over his shoulder to see her there, he smiles that smile at her that makes her insides clench and for a moment she forgets who he is, might even wish he were someone else.

“Good morning, Charlotte. How are you feeling?”

“You drugged me.”

He grimaces slightly, then nods. “I’m sorry for that. It seemed the easiest way to get you out of the city without a fuss. Food, water and fresh air should drive away any lingering effects.”

He’s _sorry_? “What else did you do to me?” Clothes could be put back on if they could be taken off, after all.

The look he gives her could almost be considered wounded, if she thought he was capable of being wounded. “Nothing, I swear. I was a perfect gentleman.”

“You slept with me.”

“There’s only one bed,” he points out, his look as innocent as an angel’s, though she’s not buying it for an instant.

She doesn’t _feel_ violated (well, any more than the needle mark and being kidnapped and on a boat who knows where would make her, but, not _bodily_ violated, save for the needle mark), so she grudgingly accepts he’s probably telling the truth. If nothing else, it eases her mind, though, only minimally. Maybe girls just lying there don’t do anything for him; maybe he gets off on the fight. Rethinking that look in his eye yesterday (was it yesterday?) makes her suspect that’s closer to the truth. 

He’s still watching her, drinking in her every expression while his evens out, giving nothing away. She tears her gaze away, looking out over the expanse of water and, far too far away for her comfort, the stretch of land running parallel to them. “Where are we?”

Monroe considers her for a moment longer, then returns his attention out to the water. “Off the New Jersey coast, just north of Cape May—we had the tide with us yesterday and anchored there last night.”

Charlie only has a vague knowledge of the coastline, and no real notion of distances on a boat, but that seems like something that could take a very long time, and she feels a flicker of panic. “How long was I out?”

“About a day and a half. I didn’t expect it to be so long, but you were breathing normally…” He sounds apologetic again, but she can’t really deal with that, the trembling she’s been fighting off, pretending not to be as scared as she is, finally taking over. She stumbles to sink down onto a padded seat along the side of the boat, staring at him blankly.

He looks alarmed, then makes a bit of a face at some thought she can’t even guess at, though his glance at their sails and the way his grip tightens on the helm suggests it has something to do with the boat. He sets about doing something she doesn’t understand, but when it’s done, he leaves the wheel and comes to crouch in front of her.

“Hey—it’s okay; you’re okay.” Given their situation, she takes his words as proof positive he is completely out of his mind. Her look must convey that, given how he grimaces, but he reaches for her hands. She tries to yank them away by reflex, but his grip is strong (and she tries not to notice its warmth on her suddenly freezing hands). “I’m not going to hurt you, Charlotte.”

She wonders what his definition of “hurt” must be for him to say that so sincerely. He’s not going to torture her? Hit her? Brutally rape her? The slide of his fingers gently over her skin, rubbing the chill away from her hands is so at odds with everything she’s imagining, echoing his words, while his gaze still pins her there with that terrifying intensity that she laughs, and even she can hear that it’s all wrong.

“What are you going to do? Use me as bait to kill Miles?”

If anything, the look he gives her is even more wounded than when she suggested he might have molested her while she was asleep. “I don’t want to _kill_ Miles, Charlotte. He’s my best friend.”

 _“I’m gonna have to walk to Philly and kill my best friend.”_ Miles’ words echo back to her, chased by Nora’s. _“They were best friends.”_

“You have a strange way of showing it.”

Monroe snorts slightly. “I’m not the one who put a gun to _his_ head. Only thing I ever did was watch his back.” His look turns confused. “…Why do you think I want to kill him?”

“ _He_ thinks you want to kill him. For trying to kill you…” It’s her turn to look confused, uncertainty flickering, because, well. That makes sense, doesn’t it? When you try and kill someone like Monroe, and fail, obviously you end up dead.

Monroe rolls his eyes. “Christ, he’s such a drama queen. So he tried to kill me. Lots of people have tried to kill me. You don’t throw aside forty years because your friend went temporarily insane.”

“And you think that’s what he did? Threw away forty years?”

He blinks at her, back to confused. “No, that’s what you think I’d do…”

“…You think he tried to kill you because he…”

“Obviously had some sort of…break with reality.” He says it like it should be obvious, with genuine-seeming concern, and Charlie’s back to wanting to laugh hysterically, because she cannot actually be having this conversation. It _can’t_ be real. Maybe she’s still drugged and hallucinating or dreaming. Otherwise, the whole world has clearly tilted off of its axis and is now spinning around the opposite way, ready to crash into the sun (Aaron would be horrified at her minimal grasp of astronomy. And physics. Astrophysics. Whatever. She's not the scientist in the family.)

Monroe lets go of her to wave a one hand, dismissing the issue of Miles like they’d been talking about the weather. “But your first question is fair.”

“Gee…I’m so glad you think so.” The words are out before she can stop them, but Monroe just gives her that smile again, and her breath stutters in her chest.

This time, he seems to realize it, because he shifts (gracefully, with no popping knees like she always hears when Miles moves like that, and she has to remind herself again that Monroe is the same age as Miles, which is older than her dad, because her head—and body—keep wanting to forget that) to sit next to her. Taking her hand in his again, he cradles it, palm up, the fingers of his other hand tracing lightly over her palm, and she draws in a sharp breath at the wholly unexpected shiver of pleasure the simple touch sends through her, making it hard to concentrate on his words. She _has_ to still be drugged.

“We’re going somewhere safe, a place only me and Miles know about. If he thinks I want to kill him, it might take him a bit to figure out where we’ve gone, but I have faith in him. He’ll get there eventually. When he figures it out, he’ll come to get you, and we’ll talk. After that, you’re free to go, as is he.”

“That’s it?” Doubt soars in her head; there has to be a catch.

“No, of course not.” He sounds like he’s speaking to a child, and that irritates her enough that she snaps out of the sensual haze the slide of his fingers is causing. She snatches her hand back; he lets her.

“What’s the catch?”

“I have a few conditions, between now and then.”

“And if I refuse to meet them—then what? You finally drop the Mr. Nice Guy Who’s Just Woefully Misunderstood act and hurt me?” Her gaze hardens and the surge of defiance she felt in the power plant steadies her more.

“I will only ever raise a hand to you in self-defense, Charlotte.” His gaze has lost its warm edge, though she doesn’t think he’s displeased by her tone. “And then only as much as necessary to keep you from doing yourself, or me, any serious harm.”

“But…?”

“If you refuse to meet my conditions, I’ll send a message back to Captain Baker and tell him to kill your brother.”

*          *          *

Bass watches as his threat sinks in, sees the horror cloud the defiant light, followed quickly by fury. She wants to come at him with claws out, he’s sure, for the first time since she emerged from below. He suspects the lingering effects of the drug had more to do with her non-violence until now than anything else; he should be disappointed, but that fire just makes him want her more.

She’s trying so hard to be brave, to stand up to him, but she’s so young at the same time.

“We’re three miles offshore, Charlotte, and I very much doubt that you know how to sail on the ocean if you know how to sail at all. You look like you want to kill me and toss me overboard, but then you’ll be stranding yourself out here and when Jeremy doesn’t get an all-clear message, he’ll kill Danny anyway, so. I advise you to keep your violence to fantasies for the moment.”

Her jaw works and her hands curl into fists, clenched tight and pressing down on her thighs in an effort, he suspects, not to deck him. He’d let her, if she threw the punch, and without reprisal—once—but it won’t do to tell her that.

“What are your conditions?” she finally bites out.

Bass smiles, then leans back on the seat, making himself comfortable, like they’re just out for an outing. He’ll have to double check the wind vane at some point, not having intended to engage it just yet, but for now, they’re headed the right way with the wind at their back and the Gulf Stream under them and he can focus on her—it’s not like there’s anything to run into.

“I have three. First, no trying to kill me, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

He smiles at her sarcasm. “Second, you don’t try to escape. It wouldn’t be wise anyway, either out here or once we get where we’re going, but I don’t want you to get hurt or me to have to try and track you down.”

She bristles more, but stays silent.

“Lastly...” He hesitates a moment. It all rests on this, after all, and part of him keeps insisting it won’t work, or if it does work, then Miles will just try and kill him all over again when he does find them, and he’ll never get his friend back. On the other hand, if he manages to survive (and if Miles tries to kill him again, will he want to? He's not sure) he’ll have her, and, he suspects, she might be a far more than satisfactory consolation prize (which is somewhat inspiring when it comes to the idea of finding something to live for again). And if it all goes _right_? He’ll have it all. “I want you.”

It’s blunt, though just saying it aloud sends the heat of that want right through him again, and he has to tell himself not to move because if he does, he’ll just press her down on the seat cushions and go back to answering those questions that kept him up most of the last night.

He remembers the feel of her body too well, the way it fit against his in the snug berth. He hadn’t lied—exactly. He hadn’t let his hands wander anywhere unseemly, at least not intentionally, just curled up behind her and wrapped her in his arms, letting the warmth of her body and the evenness of her breath finally lull him to sleep. He’d woken with one hand curved around one of her breasts and his cock straining to find its way through all their respective layers of fabric and into her. He’d jacked off before hoisting anchor, but the memory of her kept surging through him at inappropriate times.

Like now, when he feels it rioting there in his brain, watching her reaction to the direct statement, the way her lips part on an in-drawn breath that can’t really be surprise, and her cheeks flush. Her hand flies before he expects it—perhaps before she expects it, too, because when he looks back at her after the crack in the air and the sting that turns his head, that hand is pressed to her lips and terror and rage war in her eyes.

He lifts a hand and she flinches, but he only rubs at his cheek. “I probably deserved that.”

(It’s so sad that she’s not going to get any of his pop culture references—not the note on the table below or the ironic quote now. He has a moment of lamenting the loss of movies and television and the dearth of quotable material available to the kids these days.)

She relaxes just a little when he doesn't hit her, the terror easing, but the anger stays. “So, what? I spread my legs for you or you kill my brother? You won’t ‘ _hurt_ ’ me by taking me by force, but you’ll blackmail me into it?”

“No!" That's automatic, though he finds he has to qualify it. "I mean, the thought occurred to me" Of both taking her by force or outright blackmailing her out of her clothes. "But…” He reaches out, slowly, like to a spooked horse, and slides his hand over her cheek—she tenses like she’s expecting a blow, but he just lightly strokes her cheek. “I’d rather have you willing.”

Her scornful little laugh rings out again as she jerks away from his touch. “Yeah. That’s not going to happen, so how is this one of your ‘ _conditions’_?”

“Maybe not at first, but…I have faith in my ability to change your mind.” Really, he’d never had to coerce a woman to his bed in his life. Rachel might have been trying to play him, but even she’d come willingly, and then _come_ (perhaps unwillingly), slick against his lips, then again, spasming around his cock. (If both of them were thinking about the ghost-like presence in the bed with them, neither of them called out his name, at least).

Charlie rolls her eyes. “Keep dreaming. And tell me what you _do_ expect in exchange for Danny’s life.”

Bass gives her a smile. “Your agreement to play a game.”

She processes that, then tilts her head, gaze narrowing again. “What kind of game?”

“It’s an old party game we used to play in high school.” Her eyebrow arches, and he smirks. “Or, well, a modified version of it. It was called ‘Seven Minutes in Heaven.’”

No recognition flickers in her eyes. “How do you play?”

“Back then the couple who were selected—and everyone had a different way of doing the selecting—went into a closet or bedroom or something, and the people outside had a timer. The idea was basically that you had to stay in the closet for seven minutes, and the expectation was that you’d spend them making out, or more, depending on how willing the other party was.” Or what they were willing to tolerate in order to not be seen as someone who refused to play.

Her mouth tightens. “So...I agree to let you do anything you want to me, but only for seven minutes? Seems like pretty much the same thing as threatening me into sex, only I know when it will finally be over.” She gave him a look meant to be scathing. “If you can even last that long.”

He lets out an unexpected laugh and she scowls—clearly that wasn’t the reaction she wanted. “I think you’ll find I can last more than long enough, but that’s beside the point now, because, no. I’m not threatening you into sex…just a kiss.” He wishes he could think of another way, but he can’t wait long enough to woo her the more traditional way—if that’s even possible given everything, and he highly suspects it’s not. Whatever else happens, he’ll have her, of that he’s sure.

She’s looking at him like she’s trying to figure him out again, and he holds up a hand, “I know—I know. What’s the catch? You’re so suspicious, Charlotte.”

“I have reason,” she returns, dryly, though he notes some of the anger has settled into annoyance, the fear into wariness. He’ll take it.

“The only condition is you play the game at the first level—just making out—twice a day.”

“You want me to agree to let you kiss me twice a day for seven minutes?” The skepticism isn’t going away, he notes.

“No—making out implies active participation: you have to let me kiss you and kiss me back.” He doesn’t want to kiss someone who’s just sitting there anymore than he wants to fuck an unconscious body.

“For seven minutes?”

“For seven minutes.”

“And that’s all?”

“That’s all.”

“Except you’ll be trying to get more, to push as far as you can the whole time.”

Bass sighs. “No. I won’t.” 

“But you want me, all of me.”

“Charlotte…” He shifts closer, settles his hand on her jaw, fingertips lightly tracing along her neck as he leans in, lips close to her ear, pitching his voice low. She tenses, but doesn't pull away as he spells out just what he wants, voice a husky, intimate murmur. “Yes, I want all of you. I want to touch all of you, find all the places that make you shiver, and giggle, and gasp. I want to run my mouth over every inch of your skin, suck each of your nipples until they’re taut and aching under my tongue, nibble up your calf, kiss up your inner thighs, and taste the slickness of your pussy, fucking you with my tongue and sucking on your clit until you can’t remember your name, but only scream mine and God’s. I want to bury my cock in you and fuck you ‘til neither of us can walk. I want to watch you ride me, as slow and easy or hard and fast as you want, until we both come so hard we black out. I want to know what you look like when pleasure takes you, how you sound when you come undone. I want to feel your skin, slick with sweat, cooling in the night air, pressed and sliding against mine. I want to hold you as you tremble, and feel the pulse of your throat under my lips as we fall asleep, and then, Christ…I want to do it all over again.” He drags his lips along her jaw, nibbling lightly, until he reaches her lips, though he pauses there, with just a breath between them. “But I want you to want me, too. To ache for me as much as I’m aching for you. So, I’m willing to keep it to a kiss, to taste just your lips.” He can almost do it now; her breath is unevenly rushing over his lips, meeting his equally unsteady breath, but he makes himself pull back, meet her gaze, wide and shattered, and he feels a thrill run through him to know she’s not as immune as she might like.

*          *          *

It takes all she has not to squirm in an effort to find _something_ when he pulls back. Hell, it takes all she has not to launch herself back at him, kiss the lips of that mouth she’s suddenly more afraid of than the militia. She wants to see him as a monster, as President and General Monroe, responsible for the deaths of so many, of her _father_ , but right now a riot of images— _those_ images—are playing in her brain. She doesn’t even know what some of them _are_ —didn’t know people _did_ that to one another—and she’s embarrassed by her…curiosity. That’s what she’s going to call it.

“And…if I kiss you for…” She can’t do the math right now, not when she's trying to figure out why he'd want to do _that_ to her with his tongue. “That time, you won’t hurt Danny?”

“And if you don’t try to kill me or escape, then, no. I won’t hurt Danny. I give you my word.”

She shouldn’t trust it: what is his word worth, anyway? She’s sure he’s a liar. But, pragmatically, she knows that she can’t kill him or escape and actually succeed in getting back, so he’s got her on that one. The kissing….”You won’t make me do more?”

“I won’t make you do any more.”

“You won’t try to…grope me or anything?”

Amusement lights the darkness of his eyes. “My hands will stay above your waist and away from your breasts.” His smile flashes, the wickedly sweet one. “Until you give me permission.”

“Permission…?”

“Mmhmm…seven minutes of kissing, twice a day. If, at the end of those seven minutes, you want me to stop, I’ll stop. I won’t touch you again until it’s time for our next round. But I’ll ask you if you want me to stop…and you’ll have to tell me yes or no.”

It will be ‘yes,’ she promises herself, as he continues.

“If you say ‘no,’ I’ll ask if you want me to go on—to take it further, the next step, if you will. If you don’t, we’ll stick to where we’re at. If you do…then you agree to move things on.”

She stiffens, and glares. “You mean to have sex.”

He laughs, shaking his head. “Christ—I think you’re more fixated on having sex than I am. I mean, if you want to just jump ahead, I’m okay with that. We can drop the anchor and go for it here and now..." 

“ _No_ ,” she snaps flustered, but unsure what to ask, how to get him to clarify what he means. Thankfully, he takes pity on her. 

“If you don’t want me to stop, or if you want to go further, it’s for another seven minutes, either way. We’ll keep to that, I think.” He looks both amused and resigned at the same time, and she’s not sure how she feels about any of it. “If you want to go on, we’ll do it in stages—we used to call them bases, but that’s not really important. You can always ask if you want to know what moving on entails.”

“So, what would the stage after kissing be?”

“You want to jump ahead already?”

“I want to know what _you_ consider a ‘stage.’” God, he’s impossible.

“My hands get to roam a bit more—but over your clothes.”

She falls silent, thinking it over. It’s despicable, really, that he’s trying to force her to kiss him, but she knows, now, how much worse it could be. The men Maggie and Nate had killed hadn’t been willing to ask her permission for anything. As shaky as his descriptions made her, she tells herself it’s just because she was unprepared. She’ll be prepared for the kissing, will keep who he is in the forefront of her mind, list all his crimes, remember her father, remember the branding iron searing into her skin and others’, remember Strausser’s gun, remember he has Danny.

She won’t ever ask him to go further. It’s fourteen minutes a day, and just until Miles comes, and Miles _will_ come. A thought occurs to her, though, and she shoots him a sharp look.

“How do I even know you _have_ Danny, or that you haven’t already killed him?”

He looks impressed, and she doesn’t want to be pleased she impressed him. “Jeremy will send a message to let me know how things went after we left, and I’ll let him know we’re fine. I can have him include something from Danny.”

“Miles was coming…”

He just nods. “I know. But Jeremy will have told him that your brother stays behind while he comes after you or…” He shrugs.

It’s not hard to fill in the blanks. “Or you kill me.”

“Everyone behaves, everyone survives, no one has to get hurt.” His smile is practically beatific, and she wants to slap him again. How can he keep her emotions flying back and forth like this? It’s disgusting.

“And my mom?”

“I told Jeremy she’s free to go or stay, just like Miles.” He holds up his hand before she can ask, anticipating her. “Everyone is free to go except Danny, and he isn’t being kept in a cell. Jeremy's put him in Miles’ old quarters. He’ll have a doctor to see to his injuries and keep an eye on his asthma and he’ll be safe.”

She frowns, watching him, searching for some sign he’s lying, but his gaze holds hers steadily. She doesn’t really see a way out of it.

“Okay,” she finally says. “But if you’re lying, if Danny’s hurt…I will kill you in your sleep.”

“Just like Miles,” he quips, with a sardonic smile.

She’s not sure what to do. It seems as if there should be some signal of agreement, even if the negotiation is purely one-sided. He holds all the cards—she’s not in a position to disagree, just to deny him what he ultimately wants. That? She can do.  So, with a shrug, she offers her hand.

Monroe laughs, fingers curling around hers, then uses it to pull her close once more. “That’s no way to seal a deal of this kind,” he murmurs, before lowering his head.

This time, his lips meet hers. They’re warm and a little dry from the ocean wind, but no more than hers; she tastes the salt of the ocean on them when hers part in surprise. He lingers, lips parting in turn, moving over hers as his fingers slide back to cradle her neck. When his tongue teases over her lower lip, she finds herself clutching at the hand still wrapped around hers. Monroe pulls back with a smile, then gently disentangles them.

“I gotta get back to steering, but we’ll pick this up when we drop anchor tonight…”

There’s something knowing in his clear blue eyes and Charlie feels it to the pit of her stomach. She steels her resolve as he stands, swallowing back that frisson of pleasure. He wants to play a game? Fine. She’ll play. And she’ll win. And when Miles comes, he’ll kill Monroe for forcing her into this.

She shifts on the seat to look out at the shore, pushing aside the fact that the image of Monroe’s lifeblood draining out of him isn’t nearly as satisfying as it should be and adamantly refusing to acknowledge the little voice in her head that’s laughing at her and telling her that she’s already lost.


	4. He’s the Devil in Disguise, a Snake with Blue Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the road, looking for Charlie, Miles is struggling with a lot of demons. And Rachel. 
> 
> Meanwhile, somewhere off the coast of New Jersey, it's time for Bass and Charlie's first round of the game.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes of Marlie crept in here from Miles' pov, but he shut that down in his head, fast, and it had more to do with Bass, really. Basically, he's in his own personal Hell right now. With Rachel. No Danny in this one, but I'll get back to him in the next chapter!

 “I can’t believe you just left him there.”

Rachel’s voice grates on Miles’ nerves, and from the way Nora’s got her fingers curled in a fist, pressed against her thigh as she sits on the other side of the fire, he can tell it’s bothering her, too.

“Could have left you there, too,” he says, then winces at himself.

“Like before?” She snaps it, and he has to acknowledge the flare of guilt, even if, in his defense, Bass had shown him a body, and he’d had no reason to doubt she’d killed herself rather than help them.

“What I _meant_ was, you could have stayed with him.”

“And trust you to actually find Charlie, kill your precious Bass for whatever he’s done to her, and come back for me and Danny? Not likely.”

Miles closes his eyes and rubs the bridge of his nose. They’ve had this fight every night since they left Philly. The path of the helicopters isn’t hard to follow, but they can’t move nearly that fast, even with horses. He could do this better alone, or with just Nora, but, instead, he’s having to focus both on finding Charlie and on keeping Rachel and Aaron alive.

“Yeah, well. If we hadn’t left Danny there, Charlie’d be dead. Now? She’s alive. Danny’s alive. We can get them back.”

“You _trust_ him to keep them safe?”

“I trust him to keep them alive.” There’s a difference. Everyone here knows it.

She gives a scoffing sound, but falls silent. He wants to protest her doubt—Bass isn’t a liar...fake body aside. Ok. Bass isn't _usually_ a liar, not like Miles, not like her. Bass might have his own version of the truth, and it might get pretty twisted in his head, but when he makes a deal, he keeps it. Miles _has_ to trust that hasn’t changed.

None of them have gotten a ton of sleep, though he thinks he’s had the worst of it—the others dropping from exhaustion, if nothing else, at the pace he’s setting. He, however, has lain awake, staring at the dying fire every night, his thoughts running away in scattered directions. Tonight’s no different.

“ _…trust you to kill your precious Bass for whatever he’s done to her?”_

The words echo in his head, mixed up with too many memories and too many failures. He’s let Charlie down at every turn, but a small voice points out, won’t let him forget…he’s let Bass down, too. He can trace the path, did it on the regular in his solitary exile in Chicago; he knows the steps that got them here, but can’t ever seem to find the moment it went wrong. All he knows is that this, that President Monroe, is not who Bass was meant to be and it’s Miles’ fault that he is. He pulled him into this; he set the tone and the rules; he betrayed him; he left him.

And now Charlie’s paying for it.

He thought Bass would just kill him. For the past four years he’d been waiting for the bullet he hadn’t fired to catch up to him. Plenty of nights, he’d thought about helping it along. Most of the time, he was sure he’d welcome it when it came. Jeremy’s insistence that Bass wanted Miles alive, that Miles needed to _come back_ (as if he could come back to anything other than a firing squad or, if he was lucky, one last audience with the best friend he’d ever had to end it) had taken him by surprise.

And now Bass wants to _talk?_ That chases every thought as much as the self-loathing diatribes. Bass wants to talk. He might trust Bass not to kill her, but he doesn’t trust him not to hurt her, not when he’s taken Strausser, and that feels like a new all-time low, because Bass _loved_ that girl when she was little, would’ve taken a bullet for her, and now he’s got _rules_ , according to Jeremy, that she has to follow if she wants to save Danny, and Miles knows her well enough to know she’ll follow them, and Christ knows what they are, but Rachel’s sure Bass and Strausser are sharing her like a party favor, which is more than a little chilling, but Miles keeps telling himself that Bass _wouldn’t_. Miles can’t believe he’s sunk that far, except at four AM when the fire has died down and Aaron is snoring and Miles is thinking how badly he’d hurt Bass and how unstable Jeremy said he’d become and every time he closes his eyes, he sees her golden hair streaked with blood, her body bruised, her spirit broken.

He tries to replace those images, to remind himself of the Bass he’d loved, and sometimes he succeeds, but those images don’t help him sleep any more than the horrific ones, because then he sees that honey-gold hair tangled with Bass’s curls as Bass sucks a far too perky nipple between lips Miles knows the feel of, and it’s not hard to imagine what she’d feel, ‘cause he’s felt it, and those images are possibly more disturbing than the first, because it’s far, far better for her if Bass _wants_ her, truly wants her, since even if he talks her into it, for Danny, he’ll make it good for her, but that reassurance comes along with images of straining bodies and pleased cries instead of screams, tangled limbs and breathless begging instead of sobs, and then he’s hard and aching and hating himself for a very different reason, and can’t even slip into the woods to find some relief with his hand, because how fucking sick is it to jerk off to the idea of your best friend and niece in bed, especially given the situation?

Rachel’s right. He’s going to have to kill Bass when he finds him, and then probably should off himself, too, for good measure.

*          *          *

By the time they drop anchor on their first full day at sea, Charlie is windswept and a little sunburned on the nose, and totally in love with the ocean, not that she will admit that. She spends the day up at the front of the boat, only slipping into the shade where Monroe steers when the sun is the highest, then retreating away from him when some of the burning rays subside.

Monroe doesn’t seem to mind the distance, or the situation. He falls silent for stretches of time, lost in thought, with his gaze fixed on the horizon, though she’s pretty sure he’s only aware enough of it to keep their course and of her to make sure she doesn’t fall—or jump—overboard. Then, something will catch his eye, or his mind, and he’ll be back with her fully, telling her some story or another about something on the coast, pointing it out to her.

“That’s Atlantic City,” he says at one point, and she turns from watching the water to look with interest (that she tries to disguise) at the ragged skyline. “The building there right at the biggest pier is Trump Plaza—belonged to this crazy billionaire with the worst hair ever who ended up starring on some reality show where he took great delight in firing his apprentices.”

She gives him a look that says _he’s_ talking crazy, but he just smiles. “And diagonal back from it, on the other side of the pier, is Bally’s. We stayed there a couple of times.”

By the second story, she suspects, and by the third, she knows, that “we” always means him and Miles.

For most of the day, she’s been silent, like listening to the stories is part of her suffering, even though she finds that she craves these glimpses of her uncle when he was younger. It’s too easy, though, to likewise think of her captor, this man she hates, as someone else, just a guy with a past and friends and a family—who talks about her uncle like he’s part of _her_ family instead of the guy who held her mother captive for _eight years,_ killed her dad, took her brother hostage and has kidnapped her to—she doesn’t know what else he wants, really, because this all seems rather elaborate to just…fuck her (she uses the word deliberately in her head; “seduce” is too dangerous) and have a chat with Miles.

Maybe he really is crazy.

Either way, he’s going on. “There was this bar, the Mountain Bar at the Wild, Wild West—hosted beer pong tournaments and had a mechanical bull. Miles dislocated his shoulder on it once.”

The story about the bar makes her break her silence, though, as she finds herself looking back at him to ask, “…Why was he _on_ a…mechanical bull?” Her quizzical tone questions not only the sanity of Miles’ actions, but what the hell a mechanical bull is in the first place.

Monroe seems to understand that, which, if she thinks about it too hard, should disconcert her. “That’s what they were for—riding.” He shrugs a little, and she watches the way he bites his lip in thought as he tries to figure out how to explain it. When he does, he does what most people who talk about before the Blackout don’t—gives context. “There was this whole rodeo culture, with cowboys who competed to show off what they could do, mostly things that were skills you’d need on a ranch, like roping a calf. I got no idea when and why someone would actually ride a bull, but it was an event in the rodeo, the most spectacular one, and everyone thought it was bad ass, so they made these mechanical—electronic—ones and put them in bars, usually with a mat around them for when you got tossed off, and you’d pay your money and get on and it would twist and buck and bounce you around until you fell off. Mostly, drunk people did it to impress the other drunk people and get laid” He gives another shrug, his look amused, as if to say, yes, he knows, it’s a little ridiculous the things you did to amuse yourself when the world was just going on around you and survival was taken for granted.

 “So, Miles is like, ‘I am a Marine, dammit. I have survived a tour in Iraq, and fought off insurgents and no damn fake bull can beat me,’ and he did pretty well, overall, staying on as long as he did, but then the thing bucks and he _will not_ let go, even as he slips partly off the saddle. He hangs on, pulls himself back upright, right as it bucks again, and this time his legs are off and he should be heading to the mat, and he’s still holding on with one hand until the thing jerks again, hard enough that I swear, I thought I could hear the joint pop and he goes flying. He was so pissed, and had just enough whiskey in him, I don’t think he even realized he was injured ‘til I pointed it out.”

She can see it (sort of, given she’s never actually seen a bull, mechanical or otherwise), and finds herself wincing even as a reluctant laugh escapes. He looks pleased when he hears it, and she scowls, turning back around, determined to ignore him again.

She thinks she did pretty well at that, overall, now, watching him drop the anchor and secure the boat for the night, but it’s hard to feel proud of herself when her stomach is twisting up inside. They’ve stopped, which means he isn’t going to have his hands full with the boat, which means he’ll expect his kiss sometime soon. The problem with ignoring him is that it’s given her too much time to think, and, as much as she’s tried to not think about everything he said, to push his words and the images of all those things he wants to do to her out of her mind, she can’t. He’d fall silent and she’d stare at the waves and remember the salt on his lips.

He gives her a half-smile when he’s finished with the boat, and her stomach clenches. But all he does is ask an innocent question: “Hungry?”

Except it’s not that innocent, when he’s looking at her like he’s starved and she wonders at it, how he can go from charming, nothing but friendly, to distant, to focused so intently that the air around him sparks with an erotic charge.

She actually _is_ hungry—for food—but is almost nervous to tell him so, given the double meaning she reads in the question, but when she reluctantly nods, he just heads down into the cabin—swinging down easily rather than climbing. She’s not sure if she should follow him, kind of wants to stay up here like that will somehow delay the inevitable, but when he comes back up, he’s got food and whiskey—nothing fancy, just travel rations supplemented with some apple and cinnamon thing he’s got in a jar, but it’s a good amount.

“We’ll do some fishing tomorrow, see if we can’t catch something a little fresher, but hopefully this’ll do tonight?”

It’s so domestic— _we’ll do some fishing—_ that she wants to scowl, but she just takes the food with a nod. Even though she tries to linger, it’s gone too soon and she’s left with nothing but a glass of whiskey in her hand and him focused on her.

She takes a breath in the silence that seems heavy, and lifts her chin. “We might as well get this over with.”

He smirks and she wants to slap him, but then he nods and replies solemnly, “I suppose we should,” and she knows he’s mocking her a little, but she refuses to be embarrassed because he’s _forcing_ this on her and has no right to make her feel like a child. The anger feels good, more like herself, and she clings to it.

“How am I going to know when the seven minutes are up, and it’s over?” she asks, scowling.

He holds up a finger for her to wait, heading back down, then coming up with a kitchen timer—one of the wind-up kind that are about all anyone can use. Maggie had one for baking, though Charlie always found it sort of odd, the whole measuring anything in minutes. The sun ruled the day, now.

Settling on the seat next to her, Monroe reaches to play with her hair, and she jerks back. He arches an eyebrow. “You have to be close, Charlotte, for this to work…”

It’s hateful, him making her scoot back those few inches and she feels every one of them. It’s not the kiss itself she fears, though, but her reaction to it. Her heart’s pounding, and she’s uncomfortably aware of the stickiness of her panties after having little to do but think about what he’d said all day.

The curve of his lips seems to say that he knows this, and she hates him for that, too, one more sin to add to the litany. He sets the timer, and she recites her list, even as he reaches for her: _his militia does nothing but hurt people; he killed Dad; he held Mom; he took Danny; he’s a tyrant…_

But then his fingers are curled around the back of her neck, warm, and his lips are gentle on hers and he’s guiding her hand from where it’s clenched in her lap to wrap around his shoulders, and she finds her fingers clutching the fabric of his shirt instead like it’s the one thing that can steady her.

She’s frozen, otherwise, even as his lips move over hers, and his fingers tighten a little. His kiss takes on something of an edge, lips more demanding, his body tensing, and she remembers she’s supposed to be kissing him back. So she takes a breath and lets her lips yield to his, unclenching her fingers so they rest against him, pressing lightly in what she hopes is an accepting way.

He relaxes again, the demand easing back into something more coaxing. She expects him to force his tongue in her mouth, like every boy who’s kissed her before, but he doesn’t. His lips just tease and move against—with—hers until she finds herself parting them, mimicking his movements, because it occurs to her, she doesn’t really know what else to do. She’s never been kissed like this.

When his tongue does join their lips, it’s just as playful, swiping along her lower lip, teasing the seam of them when they close for a moment: no crude thrusting and trying to lick her tonsils or whatever. Her lips part more of their own accord, the mimicking unconscious, and when she lets her tongue tease against his, she tastes the whiskey he’d been drinking and has the thought that it tastes way better on his tongue than in the glass.

 _He killed Dad; he kept Mom captive; he took…_ the litany gets broken again as the flicker of heat grows in the kiss and his hand at her lower back urges her closer. His fingertips run up her back, then down, and the next time he repeats the movement she feels the blunt drag of nails along her spine that makes her gasp.

His mouth gets more demanding again, and this time hers is more than happy to answer it. She grabs hold of where she was— _he took Danny, he’s kidnapped me, he’s leading Miles into a trap—_ but instead of making her pull back, it translates into the kiss. The heat at her core, between her legs, the pleasure that races from her mouth right to it, strengthened by the scratch of his nails through her shirt—they join with the anger, and the kiss turns into a battle. Their tongues tangle and she has the thought that somehow the kiss can be punishing, not this gentle play like they’re lovers out for a jaunt, courting the way boys and girls do.

She doesn’t anticipate the problem with that approach, and she’ll kick herself for it later: he kisses like Miles taught her to fight, all focus and dominance and taking no quarter, and, instead of quenching the flames in righteous fury, when she responds, it does the same thing fighting does. It makes her burn.

She didn’t know, didn’t realize, how close the two could be, but she understands, suddenly, why Miles and Nora struggle to keep their hands off each other after a battle, figures out why she’d thought of Nate when her body was keyed up after he saved her and disappeared. They’re linked, lust and life, anger and want, at least for people like them.

Her hands are twisted in his hair, tugging at the curls, and he’s pulling her closer, yanking her on his lap with a hands buried in her hair just as tight and his mouth devouring hers like she’d expected in the beginning, only so much more skillfully that every slide of their tongues has her all but rocking against him, when the timer goes off.

She’s breathing hard when he pulls back, and so is he, and she can barely see the blue in his eyes when she meets his gaze, so wide are his pupils. She swallows, hearing her heart pound in her ears. Part of her thinks he’s just going to pull her back in, but with a visible struggle, he finally gets out the words: “Do you want me to stop?”

 _No._ She wants to rip into him, tear him apart the way he’s stripping away pieces of her, but the pause lets her realize where she is, how close she’s pressed herself, and she remembers his smug certainty that she’d let him have her willingly. It’s horrifying to realize he might be right, and she’s as furious with herself as she is with him.

“Yes,” she all but spits at him. With a bit of a snarl, she moves her hands to his shoulders, shoving herself off of him, stumbling a little and yanking away when he puts a hand to her arm to steady her. “Don’t touch me. Your seven minutes are up.”

He lets her go, and she doesn’t care how much he doesn’t want to, only that he does, and if some  part of that surprises her, that he keeps his word, she refuses to look at it too closely, as she stalks to the other end of the boat, determined to stay there ‘til morning.

The wind off the water forces her to retreat from that idea, but Monroe appears to be asleep when she creeps below, stretched out on his side of the bunk with a book lying beside him and a lantern softly glowing in one of the nooks that he must have been reading by.  She crawls onto the bunk and presses as close to the other cabin wall, and away from his heat, as she can, realizing he’s not asleep only when he sits up. She tenses, thinking he’ll reach for her, and squeezes her eyes shut, but all he does is blow out the lantern before stretching back out, rolling on his side so he’s facing away from her.

She falls asleep eventually, but it’s hours later and with the surety that she can still taste him on her lips.  


	5. Sometimes You Think You're Gonna Get It...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A couple of mistimed (or perfectly timed) moments have Charlie and Bass taking things up a notch, though both remain determined to win this game they've started between them. 
> 
> But who's winning is hard to tell when you can't keep your goals in mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was meant to advance the actual plot some. Mostly it turned into PWP. Chapter 6 is almost done, though, as well, and will be far more plotty! 
> 
> (Not that PWP is bad, most of the time, right?)
> 
> Let me know what you think and what you're enjoying/looking forward to most!
> 
> Edited to Add: OK, y'all convinced me it's not PWP. I just had a PLAN for this chapter that the smut overtook. LOL I know I promised more Danny in this one, for one, and then there was just no graceful shift over to him, but for those who are waiting for him: he's opening the next chapter!

The next morning, Charlie wakes to find Monroe pressed against her back. One strong arm curls around her waist; his hand curves intimately across her ribs. She wants to be horrified, but her still half-asleep mind notices the way her back fits against his chest and his arm around her makes a kind of shelter, holding her steady as the incoming tide rocks the boat. Heat radiates off him, wrapping her in a warm cocoon against the cold air of the cabin. For a few moments, she feels _safe,_ the very absurdity of it making her suppress a laugh.

The movement, small as it is, makes the sleeping man stir against her, arm tightening and lips nuzzling against her neck with a wordless, content murmur. Only then does Charlie feel the press of him lower, the hard line of his penis…(what has she heard the boys call it? Right, cock)…his cock, then, nestled practically between the cheeks of her ass, or as much as it can be with her pants still on. Her brain clearly hasn't woken up, yet (she's going to insist on that until her last breath), because she fights the urge to rock back against it, like her body is questing for his.

The image of him baring them both and lazily taking her just like this intrudes. Limited as her ability to imagine what that would feel like is, the visual persists, and her hips move involuntarily, rocking against him. He mirrors the movement, though with more finesse, hips rolling into her, seeking friction, and Charlie gasps, pulling away sharply and jolting them both to wakefulness.

Rolling so her back presses against the hull of the boat, Charlie glares at him. Blinking sleepily, curls all awry, he looks far younger and almost vulnerable, and she wonders if this is the face of her uncle’s best friend, the one she knows Miles is thinking of when his eyes slide away into the distance or he stares into flames like something precious dances within them. Then Monroe drags a hand over his face, and when he pulls it away, the boy who could be named “Bass” is gone and the walls are back up.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “I wasn't awake.”

It takes her a moment to realize he means the rutting (she's seen animals rut, knows this was different, but slams the word onto the movement, like the label will strip it of its ability to tantalize her), but she sniffs when she does. “Likely excuse.”

He's the one glaring now, angry and maybe a little hurt lingers under it, and he shoves out of the berth, crossing the cabin to the bathroom, where he reaches inside to grab something she can't see, before storming up on deck, slamming the door. The boat rocks in evidence of his ire, but Charlie refuses to feel guilty.

***

After letting down the ladder, Bass strips off his clothes and drops over the edge of the boat into the water below. Salt water isn't ideal for bathing—you stay sticky and salty—but it's still _clean,_ and better than wasting drinking water. Charlotte’s horrified look follows him into the cold water—which does its job of quenching the need that sleeping so close to her after that kiss built up. For the first time, he's doubting the wisdom of his plan (shocking it’s taken this long, he hears a voice that sounds a bit like Miles snark at him in his head, but his self-mocking always sounds a bit like Miles, so he ignores it)—not the part about taking her or getting Miles to come to them or anything--that's brilliant, obviously—but the part where he won't touch her more than kisses without permission.

He really just wants to bend her over the edge of the boat and fuck her until she's sobbing his name and crashing and clenching around him and he's spilling himself into her. Then he wants to do it again in the berth, burying himself in her like she can fill the parts of him Miles took away.

Cold water or no, his cock still twitches its agreement, and he groans, dropping under the water and only coming up when his lungs feel ready to burst.

When he finally pulls himself back up the ladder and reaches for his towel, he’s back in control of himself and she's opening the cabin door and emerging onto the deck. She freezes at the sight of him, and Bass makes no effort to cover himself with the towel. Instead, he dries off like he normally does, with his hair first, all too aware she hasn't fled, but still stands there. Water droplets bead his skin, sliding downward, catching in the curls above his not-as-flaccid-as-it-should-be cock, shifting to drop off its end or wend their way around his balls.

Emerging from the towel, he sees her gaze fixed there. The tip of her tongue flicks, wetting her lips, and he clamps his own lips down on a groan. He could save them both, wrap the towel around his waist and cut off her gaze, but he towels off, alternately hiding and showing off lean lines, hard muscle and pale scars.

She never moves.

Smirking a bit, he finally wraps the towel around his waist and crosses to her. Her gaze drifts upward with each step until she meets his eyes just as he reaches her. Her wide eyes are a curious mix of innocence and womanly want tinged with a helpless horror, like her thoughts appall her as much as his nearness. When he reaches his arm past her, snagging the timer discarded the night before, her shirt brushes over his bare chest. He keeps her there (she could retreat back down the steps, he notes, but she doesn't) as he sets the timer and settles his hands against her lower back.

Without a word, he lowers his lips to hers, hands tightening to pull her flush against him. Her lips part under his with a whimper and the sound of it hits him in the gut. Any intention to start slow and easy, to echo the sweetness of waking with her warm and pliant in his arms, disappears as he does groan then. He shifts to press her back against the wall, trapping them both there on the stairs, bodies flush, each twitch threatening to dislodge his towel.

He half expects her to try and retreat to a bare minimum of participation, but with a sound that reminds him of a sob, her arms wrap around his neck, fingers delving into wet curls and tangling there.

She's all strong lines broken by places of softness, and he longs to learn every rise and hollow. Their tongues spar fiercely, the frustrated awakening fueling some kind of competition. She learns fast. When an ocean swell threatens their balance, her nails dig into his shoulder to regain it. He hisses in both pain and pleasure, and when the boat steadies, she does it again, this time on purpose. He moans and her nails slice down his back until her fingers press above the edge of the towel. Bound only by said towel, his cock hardens, shifting freely with each of their movements. Another wave rocks the boat, and when they settle their movement again, he's got his knee pressed into the wall between her legs, and she's straddling his thigh.

A soft mewling sound escapes her lips as he rubs against her core (maybe it's cheating, a bit, but he only promised his hands would stay above her waist and over her clothes, he rationalizes. Honestly, he's pretty sure dry humping still counts as first base. If it doesn't, it should, even if his towel is near slipping off and he wants to hoist her up, wrap her legs around him and grind against her in truth). She pushes back against him, hips rolling to get more friction herself, and he wonders if he's imagining that he can feel the heat of her through fabric.

He pulls his lips from hers to nibble along her jaw, down her neck, sucking at spot where a brush of his lips makes her whine. She jerks against him, nails digging in again, as the timer goes off. He forces himself to still, but she doesn't, riding his thigh with little rocks of her hips. He finds her earlobe with his teeth, his voice rough, as he grinds out, “Do you want me to stop?”

***

Back home, Charlie knew a girl who wanted out and to the city, or anywhere, so desperately she threw herself at any militia boy or traveler that came through. Once, Charlie’d heard one of the older women remark to Maggie that the girl “kept chasing those boys like a bitch in heat.” Charlie knew what dogs were, but that wasn't really anything she could visualize. Now she thought she knew what they'd meant.

Her body has been burning since she came above deck and saw him standing there. Aaron had tried to make sure they got some sort of education, even if it seemed useless to talk about mythology when survival was on the line, but he'd insisted that stories where how civilization continued, how we learned, so they'd dutifully read through precious books about people larger than life, who wore very little in the sketches inside.

Monroe reminds her of one of those mythic heroes (or villains) (and, really, as a figure far removed whose whims controlled their lives indirectly, and whose pleasure now rules hers very intimately, he seems to match those mythic figures in many ways.) Charlie remembers something about Persephone and pomegranates—which are apparently some kind of fruit—but she has a sneaking suspicion Hades didn't look much like Sebastian Monroe. Hector, maybe, or Ares. Warrior or god or warrior god, fine scars tracing otherwise perfect stretches of skin. She looks greedily, until her gaze lights on the swelling organ between his legs which seems to stretch and preen just for her as Monroe slides the towel over himself like how Charlie imagines peep show girls do with their scarves and fans.

The flare of heat that runs through her then makes her knees go a little weak, her body reminding her of how he'd felt pressed against her, insides clenching as she realizes _that_ is what he wants to put inside of her. She's seen men naked before, but only in those awkward ways that happen when you live and travel on top of each other, and only family members (and once, in an incident they mutely and mutually agreed to never mention again, Aaron). This isn't like that, at all. Maggie's explanations about how the penis works and how it grows as it becomes erect seem woefully inadequate.

She's still trying to reconcile expectation with reality and gain control of her melting insides when he's there, and _it_ presses against her, its outline clearly delineated by the towel, and she swears she feels it _twitch_ when their tongues start their battle. By the time his leg slides behind hers, Charlie's hormones and imagination are feeding one another. The press of his leg barely registers except as something to rub (rut—and this time she suspects it’s the right use of the word) against to try and relieve the growing ache between her legs.

Her previous explorations of her body informed her about the results of friction there, but it’s different when she doesn’t have to figure out her fingers, just move with the rhythm he sets. She can't stop doing so when he stills, frustration flaring because she’s doing all the work. His words make her still, though, and she desperately tries to remember her mantra. _He killed…_ somebody. So did Miles. A lot of somebodies.

The sound she makes reminds her too much of a sob (she didn't even note the one earlier), and she curls her fingers against his skin (still warm, despite the cold water, the cool air, and wet, like she is, his hair dripping like her sex, his towel as soaked as her panties) to keep him close.

She means to say “yes.” She needs him to stop. What comes out, though, is a growled, “No.”

She feels as much as hears his indrawn breath, and his voice is hoarse, when he asks the question she didn't let him get to the night before. “Do you want me to move on?”

 _Damn it._ She doesn't remember what's next. She doesn't actually care as long as he goes back to rubbing against her. “Yes.” The word sounds spiteful even to her, but he makes a pleased sound that just makes her pussy clench as she realizes how empty it is (which is a stupid thing to realize--it's never been _not_ empty. Why the hell should that matter now?)

Before she can process that question through, he's got the timer reset and his hand has slid up from her waist, and if she thought his touch on her ribs was intimate when she woke, the way his fingers curl around her breast makes her make one of those embarrassing sounds in the back of her throat again, back arching to press herself more into his hand—a move which has the added advantage of making her hips rock against him again.

His fingers tweak at her nipple through the fabric of her bra, and she’s never given much thought to her breasts before except as something boys stare at before making some comment about how maybe they’ll grow, but it turns out a direct line of fire stretches from them to the heat between her legs, and his fingers set it singing.

***

Her responsiveness delights Bass; he expected this to go far less well after last night (no matter how promising her response to his kisses had been, her retreat and stubborn insistence on not speaking to him the rest of the night had been less so. But maybe she just needed to adjust. Maybe she's done so. Maybe this will work, after all, and it won't be pistols at dawn when Miles finally gets to them). The demanding press of her breast into his hand has his fingers moving over her far more purposefully, but the sounds breaking free from her throat say she wants more. Perhaps he should ask, but he doesn't, sliding his hand under her top and running his fingers over bare skin, undoing her bra with deft fingers until he can cup the weight of her breasts in his palms, rolling her nipples between his fingers.

***

Perhaps she should protest his skipping a step, if she remembered he has, but she doesn't. Instead, she presses more into him, hips rolling their own demand—one he answers, as well. The first brush of his hand over her ass makes her jump, but ultimately he shifts to grasp her hip after a moment of exploring her curves. Then he's guiding her movements on his thigh, dragging her up, sliding her down. She feels it when his towel loses its precarious position around his waist, realizes her body is all that's holding it up when she feels the head of his cock nudge the center of her mound.

***

Bass shudders as her jeans press against sensitive flesh, wants to slide her higher, but their position doesn't lend itself to that, and even he can't deny that’d move them farther than she's agreed to. So he focuses on the drag of her body, on the press of her against him, of him against her, making sure to line up each slide of them together to hit her just there, the spot that has her trembling. She's lost in the movement, seeking her pleasure with the thoughtless abandon of the young, and he deftly guides her to it, feeling it as she tenses, goes taut against him and his hands. He holds her there a moment, then slides his hand under her ass as he pulls her up, fingertips pressing against the core of her, and she cries out into his mouth, body shaking as she comes apart just from this. _Perfection_.

***

She's brought herself to this point before, but it's _different_ when it's someone else’s hands guiding her, someone else's body pressed close, the taste of someone else on her tongue, the slide of someone else's skin under her fingertips. She rides it out, rocking against his thigh, unable to think for what seems forever. He's tense against her, though his hands are gentler, brushing over her skin, thigh stilled though she slowly becomes aware of just how little separates them. When she glances down, his cock rests against the line of her thigh, nudging at her. His skin is slick and he's breathing just as hard as she, and his cock is so hard against her she can't believe it was remotely soft, ever, when he'd gotten out of the water. For a moment he's just a man, and she’s just a 20-year-old virgin who’s never been this close before and curiosity burns through her. Her fingers drop, like she might run them over his length, and she feels him tense. Looking up at him through her tangled hair, she considers too many possibilities. Her hand drops lower…

And the timer goes off.

“Do you want me to stop?” The question is soft, and his lips curl in a touch of a smirk that matches the too-knowing look in his eyes that seems to dare her to stop this now.

Wrong move.

Her gaze narrows in response, and she raises up to press herself against his chest, fingers curling around firm biceps for balance, bringing her lips to his ear. His thumb brushes over a taut nipple, and she does have to suppress a shiver, but she keeps to her purpose. Voice low and husky, she rocks her hips over his length just once, making him moan, and answers.

“Yes.”

He freezes, then jerks back, and the shock on his face makes triumph soar through her. When that shock melts into something harder, colder for a moment, she wonders if she's gone too far, and the moment stretches until she's sure something has to break. Then his hands move to her waist as he very deliberately pulls back from her. The towel drops, as does her gaze with it.

His cock looks like it hurts.

Her gaze snaps back to his face and she refuses to feel guilty for the pleasant warmth rolling through her body. He steps back, giving her room to move past him, and her triumph soars, some of her fear ebbing away. He could take her right now (could've anytime, she has to admit), but hard and aching and knowing she's gotten off, he still keeps his word. For the first time since the morning her father died, Charlie feels a surge of pure power run through her, and her smile is almost cocky and she moves back down to the galley, grabbing some food, and slides right past him onto the deck, giving him a sunny smile, keeping her gaze on his face, like his nakedness and nearness aren't even remarkable.

Through it all, he stands watching her, not bothering to pick up his towel. Only when she's settled in one of the side seats does he move, and that's just to stretch, body long and hard, and she feels a moment's regret that he's her enemy and she hates him and is over here where she can’t run her fingers over him like he did her. But Monroe just leans back against the well of the stairs—long legs braced against the other side and effectively blocking her from going back down below—and takes himself in hand, those clever fingers wrapping around his length and stroking it slowly.

***

A gentleman would retreat downstairs to take care of this, Bass knows, but the way her smug look turns to shock (like he has to imagine his did when she cut him off) keeps him there. She's staring again, in what may be morbid fascination, but it keeps her looking at him anyway, and he takes it as a teachable moment, working himself the way he likes it, the way she’ll do and someday soon. He keeps his gaze on her for a few moments, then tilts it back as pleasure builds and his hand moves faster.

He's stretched there, on display, one foot up a step to open his hips to her, and Charlie knows she should look away, not give him the satisfaction of an audience. Even when she manages, she can still hear him—the slap of skin, the moans he doesn't bother to hold back. He's wanton pleasure come to life, fingers tight around his leaking cock, slicking it with the moisture that gathers on its tip. She's almost jealous, miffed he's enjoying his _hand_ more than he seemed to enjoy her body, as his moans break a little, his hips jerking into his hand.

The build doesn't take long, he's so primed from her coming for him. At first, Bass remains acutely aware of her, deliberately putting on a show, but as the pleasure builds, he just lets himself enjoy it, replaying the feel of her breast in his hand and the sounds she made when she came against his thigh. Christ—if she can come that easily…his imagination riots, and she's spread beneath him, making those sounds as his cock teases through her folds, then presses into her. His strokes are long and smooth, at her entrance, then sliding balls deep again and again until he's pounding her, making her breasts bounce, and she's moaning his name…His mind veers, and he lets the picture form of a third body, tangled in theirs, hard cock pounding into Bass as he pounds into Charlie, rough hands bruising Bass’s hips, growling voice telling Bass just what to do to make his innocent niece writhe and beg for more of him…

***

She wonders what he's thinking when his eyes fall closed and his hand tightens, moves faster, his breath uneven and shaky, his moans a little shattered, but no intelligible words fall from his lips. She can't look away, not even as he comes with a shout, liquid spurting from his tip to coat his hand. He looks wrecked, like some kind of thoroughly debauched angel, and she squeezes her thighs together to try and keep the pleasure from sparking at her core again.

When he opens his eyes, she jerks her gaze away, cheeks burning, but she knows he knows she was watching.

***

Bass strolls across the deck to his discarded clothes, cleaning his hand on the towel, before tugging them back on, aware of her blushing and pleased to have wrenched some of the power back.

To be honest, though, he's not sure who won this round, but his blood hums under his skin, as he finds himself looking forward to their next match.

 

 


	6. …But You Don’t and That’s Just the Way It Goes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny adjusts to life in Philly; Miles faces a roadblock in his quest to find Charlie and Bass; and Charlie and Bass reach their destination and the brink of an understanding, but find themselves haunted by ghosts from their mutual pasts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to stop promising to have these up by a certain time as life keeps mocking my efforts to meet my internal deadlines.
> 
> This one got a bit more internalized for everyone, and more than a little angsty. But they're all facing a lot of big decisions and playing around in their heads felt right. Somehow this is turning into a much more epic-in-scale story than I originally anticipated. Thank you so much to all of you coming on the ride with me!

_Philadelphia_

The room—rooms, plural, actually—Captain Baker settles him in are the cleanest, as well as most opulent, ones Danny’s ever seen. Books of military strategy line the wall around the desk in the sitting room area; a few maps form a plateau above the surface desk, with half-written notes, thoughts jotted down, on paper around them. The closet holds a row of neatly pressed uniforms and several pairs of boots that have been buffed to a shine; a row along the other wall contains jeans and a couple of leather jackets. In the dresser drawers, T-shirts, socks and underwear rest in precisely folded rows; the bathroom stores all the necessities and more than a few luxuries, as well. The linens are clean, the towels are fresh. One uniform jacket drapes over the back of the desk chair; a chessboard sits in the corner, a game in play. A hairbrush lays carelessly on the shelf over the bathroom sink, just waiting, like the pens tossed on the desk, to be picked up again.

When Captain Baker said he’d be put in Miles’ former quarters, Danny had expected them to be nice enough, but impersonal—Miles has been gone for years, after all, from what he’s gathered. Instead, the rooms feel like their owner just stepped out for the day and will be back any moment, everything frozen in time, just waiting for his return.

Danny feels like an intruder.

Worry for Charlie chases through his head, even as Captain Baker fetches him for dinner. They eat in what appears to be the mess with militia soldiers settled at the tables lining the large room, shouting comments back and forth to each other, laughing and joking the way Danny had seen them do sometimes around the fires. Seeing them as the enemy comes harder when so many of them seem like guys just like him. However, he’s just as much an outsider here as he had been on the road, except that Captain Baker sits across from him, talking to him like an equal, asking questions that make him sound genuinely interested in Danny’s dull life, without being prying or intrusive.

Later that night, Danny winces a little, knowing his own monosyllabic responses had been rude—Monroe made the Captain as much a pawn in this situation as Danny—but the older man hadn’t ever seemed put off. Instead, he shared little bits about himself, pointing out different militia members in the hall, his observations and stories dripping with wry amusement that got Danny to actually laugh at least once.

He expects to be awake all night, but the bed is by far the most comfortable one he’s ever slept in, and when a knock sounds on his door mid-morning, he jerks awake, startled and disoriented. Scrambling out of bed, he rubs at his eyes, before moving to answer it. Instead of Captain Baker or one of his guards, the door opens to reveal Jason Neville, shifting uncomfortably, though he snaps to stillness almost immediately upon seeing Danny.

He doesn’t comment on Danny’s sleep-rumpled t-shirt, shorts and hair, but the other young man’s immaculate uniform and alertness make Danny all too aware of how deeply he’d been sleeping and how late it must be.

“Captain Baker thought you might want to get out, see some of the city,” Jason offers, looking cool and collected and far older than Danny, even though the difference can’t be more than a few years. “He assigned me to show you around, if you want, or see if there’s anything you need.”

Jason doesn’t seem overly thrilled about the assignment—which, Danny supposes, is kind of a glorified babysitting gig—but is too polite, or professional, to look annoyed by it.

Danny hesitates. He should be resentful, angry, refuse overtures that can only lull him into a sense of security or make him forget who these people are. On the other hand, learning all he can now might prove advantageous in the future. Thus, the warmth from last night coupled with a good night’s sleep have nothing to do with how he widens the door, stepping back to let Jason in.

“I’d like that, yeah. I’ve never been anywhere this big, at least not that I can remember. Just let me get dressed.”

He did so quickly, putting himself to rights as best he could with what was available to him, then hastily straightened the bed, conscious of Jason’s watchful presence. The other young man didn’t really say anything, but instead crossed to look at the books Miles had left behind.

“I’ve never been in here. I didn’t expect so many books.” His tone of surprise when he finally says something pulls Danny’s attention.

“You know my uncle?”

Jason turns sharply away from the books, shaking his head a little. “Not really. I mean, before the Republic, before the militia, we were one of the families he and President Monroe rescued, took into their camp, so. I’ve known who he was and he was around a lot for those eight or nine years, before he left. But I was just a kid, so. I didn’t _know_ him. Just…formed impressions from the outside.”

Danny’s surprised by the spill of information, filing away the pieces about Miles and Monroe rescuing families in his mental image he’s constructing about his mysterious uncle where none of the pieces add up to anything he can understand, yet. “Well, that’s more than I know,” he says with a shrug. “Dad never talked about him growing up, and I saw the guy for about thirty minutes before he and my mom went off after Charlie.”

He sees the flash of worry under Jason’s soldier façade for a moment, as well as its accompanying bitterness, and remembers the train and the way Jason looked at Charlie. He files that away, too. Tugging his boots on, he straightens.

“I’m ready.”

* * *

They grab some toast for breakfast with something Jason calls peanut butter on it that Danny’s never had, but decides must come from heaven. As they move through the city, Jason proves to be a knowledgeable tour guide. Having been there from the start, he tells Danny about settling in Philadelphia and the birth of the militia and Republic—things Aaron didn’t really teach in class. Danny doesn’t want to be fascinated, but after spending his life isolated from what remained of the outside world, he can’t help but drink it up.

The city is huge, expansive in a way Charlie used to talk about finding and exploring, and Danny misses her with a keen edge he swallows back and refuses to indulge in while surrounded by the enemy. Nice and knowledgeable as he is, that’s what Jason has to remain, if only because of the burning hatred Danny’s got for his father. This nice guy act is probably just that—an act. Still, as the day wears on, he finds himself talking more easily, asking curious questions and reassuring himself that it’s all in the name of information gathering.

By afternoon, they’ve circled around to the barracks where the men are training. Despite himself, Danny leans against the fence, watching them as much as he was watching his surroundings earlier. Under the intense hatred he’s trying to hold on to lies a pang of wistfulness. Not for this, the Monroe Militia, the scourge of all decent people everywhere, but for…he’s not sure what. The camaraderie. The skill. The sense of purpose.

His dad sheltered him, hovered over him all his life. Charlie had spent hers having to take care of him, never letting go of his hand, at least metaphorically. The militia wouldn’t even conscript him when they found out about his asthma. Part of him had been relieved; the other part, angry and humiliated, weak. Useless. He might have failed, painfully, but fighting Jason’s father had felt good; taking the pain had made him proud of himself for the first time. Killing the soldier who killed his dad had lit a spark he hadn’t recognized fully until now, all the little stings of the journey, the humiliations, the inability to protect anyone or anything…Watching the soldiers now, it crystallizes into something harder, more determined.

He bites it back, not trusting himself or Jason to speak it aloud, but somehow when he’s walking back from dinner that night with Captain Baker, he finds the words tumbling out.

“Can you teach me to fight?”

The Captain’s eyebrows go up at the abrupt question, and he stops his measured steps to study Danny for a long moment, his gaze calculating. Danny straightens under it, chin lifting unconsciously as the older man frowns a little.

“Why?”

He could lie, but the truth comes out before he can stop it. “I’m tired of being weak.”

Something Danny can’t identify—not pity, but almost an understanding—flickers in the Captain’s eyes, before he nods slowly. “If you let a doctor examine you, and promise to follow his instructions and any limitations…I can’t have you dying of an asthma attack because of something I did.”

He hates the idea of limitations, but Maggie’s the only doctor he’s ever seen and cut off as they were, maybe there were treatments they’d found since the Blackout that could help. After a moment, he nods. “I promise.”

A slight smile flickers over the Captain’s lips. “Then I’ll teach you.”

*  *  *

_Outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania_

“Goddammit!” Miles doesn’t mean to yell at the farmer, but the news that the helicopters separated is hardly welcome, if to be expected. It’s what he would have done in Bass’s place.

The flicker of fear in the man’s eyes, though, has Miles raising his hands in a placating gesture and turning away with a mumble of thanks for the information that he doesn’t really feel.

“What did he say?” Nora keeps her voice down when he moves back to the group, like Rachel isn’t already headed their way. No point in trying to hide it; no reason to, either, except he’s not looking forward to her reaction on top of his own growing concern for Charlie’s welfare.

So, he waits until she and Aaron join them before responding. “They split up. One went north, one south.” His mind is already working out directions, places Bass might be heading, but for all they know the man circled back around to Philadelphia. They’ve been walking three days just to reach somewhere the helicopters got little more than an hour after they left. Looking to Rachel, he asks, “How far can the one without the amplifier go?”

“I don’t know. Twenty or thirty miles, tops.” But her expression says she knows that’s a vast amount of ground to cover.

“And the one with the amplifier will keep going ‘til it runs out of fuel…” He’s talking more to himself, trying to put himself in Bass’s shoes. “He didn’t have long enough to plan to find out where there might be fuel still available, and he’s not likely to have any pilots who’d know….” He’s sort of amazed that Bass found two people able to fly the copters at all. “They’re old, been sitting a while. Maybe he manages another hundred in that one, at the most…”

“Putting us another four or five days behind them,” Nora points out, very unhelpfully, Miles feels, though he chastises himself almost as soon as the thought forms. She’s right, after all.

“He’s got to be planning to stop somewhere. Question is where…” He’d have thought south to Baltimore or north toward Scranton, and maybe that was the plan and this is just diversion, but with Bass it’s impossible to know for sure. Once upon a time, Miles thinks he could have figured it out. Now? It keeps eluding him. He’d have to go somewhere he could still communicate with Jeremy, but there are more than a few outposts scattered out here and cities where at least rudimentary communication systems have been reborn.

“Or he could have just…gone back to Philadelphia,” Aaron offers, echoing Miles’ earlier thought, and Miles wants to punch him.

_Not helpful, Matheson_ , he tells himself sharply. “Also a possibility.” He thinks another moment, before turning to Rachel again. “Any way to know which copter had the amplifier in it?”

“No.”

And no way to know which had Bass in it, anyway, either.

“We’ll have to split up.” A chorus of protests washes over him almost immediately. “You got any better ideas?”

They argue a while longer, tired and hungry and dispirited, but no one can offer anything else. Ideally, he’d send them off in four different directions, but Rachel and Aaron would end up dead before the day was out. There’s no help for it he can see.

They rest for the night and when they separate in the morning, Miles and Rachel head south while Aaron and Nora head north. They can’t really make a plan—there’s no way to know when and what they might find—but they loosely agree to meet back in Philly to at least collect Danny before the winter sets in.

Miles just hopes it’s not too late by then. Bass has had her for over four days already. Given self-control and Bass are barely nodding acquaintances, whatever he’s planning to do to her is probably already done. So Miles tries to ignore the little voice that whispers in his head, _too late for what?_

* * *

_Somewhere off the coast of Maine_

One more day, two more nights, and midday of their fourth day at sea Bass flashes her one of those disconcertingly bright smiles, pointing ahead of them. “There it is.”

They’ve fallen into a holding pattern that can’t hold for much longer; even Charlie knows that. He waited to touch her until they were in bed the last two nights. Her agreement to go as far as she had apparently was for all time, she found out when his hand slid to her breast after barely a minute of kissing. She’d tried to squirm away, but then he drew her leg over his hip and rolled against her in a way that couldn’t help but remind her of the morning before and she’d decided not to protest, part of her eagerly awaiting the release he primed her body for.

Except it didn’t come.

The first time she told him to stop after the timer dinged and her breasts were aching from his attention, her pussy soaking her panties, she’d taken it as a point of pride. She’d waited until his breaths evened out, then got herself off as quietly as she could. Still feeling triumphant, she’d faced him with a smile in the morning, only to have him start the timer and draw her fingers into his mouth, sucking away all trace of her that still lingered on them. By the time his tongue was done playing over her skin—while his gaze drilled into hers the whole time—she’d been soaking wet again. Furious with herself, and him, she’d told him to stop. He had.

He’d found the balance quickly, she realized that night—last night—when he drove her right to the edge. She’d told him not to stop, but refused to reach out, refused to let him go farther, and the bastard had kept her right there on the edge, still touching her, still kissing her, but keeping his body angled just enough away to deny her the friction she needed. She’d finally snarled and pushed him away when the timer dinged again, aware he wasn’t going to let her get off so easily and, yet, not willing to tell him to go farther. She’d had to lay awake then as he—far more slowly than before—brought himself to orgasm, complete with writing movements on the small bed she couldn’t help but feel.

This morning, he’d been up before she was and her traitorous body was already aching from the smell of his sex that lingered in the air (along with her own), but when she went above deck, she found him thoroughly occupied with the boat. Now the sun is overhead and he still hasn’t touched her, but is smiling like a kid with a new toy, pointing out some stupid island to her.

“There what is?” she asks, aware she sounds snappish, but his smile doesn’t falter.

“Where we’re going,” he explains, his own tone laced with exaggerated patience that makes her feel like a stupid child.

She grinds her teeth together, but can’t help looking at the island again more closely. It’s bigger than the bare outcroppings of rocks he’d told her the names of the day before—maybe a couple of miles long, though her grasp of distances is slight enough she could be grossly wrong in either direction. Big enough, at least, that there is a stretch of beach on the eastern side where a small dock stretches into the water. It would be hidden from the distant mainland’s shore, she realizes. On the western edge, facing that mainland, Charlie spots what looks like a small village.

“What’s that?” she asks, before she can stop herself.

“Nova Stroma,” he answers her, as if that really gives her any answer. Her look must clue him in on that. “Small fishing village. They could’ve come in to the mainland after the Blackout, but they chose not to. Said they had all they needed right there.” 

“And we’re going there?”

“For supplies, sure, but actually…” He swings the boat around a little to the right in a smooth movement that pushes them eastward a bit and gives her more of a view of the little pier and beach facing the ocean. “We’re going there.”

Following the line of his arm, she looks up the small cliff that rises from the beach, finally able to see the house at the top of it. It’s pretty, in a quaint sort of way that she’s noticed in the abandoned houses she’s spotted on their trip north. This one, however, is in far better shape. Rather than abandoned, it looks more like someone’s home.

“Whose is it?”

Amusement flickers across his lips before his look turns a little sad in the way she’s come to know means he’s thinking about something better in the past, something lost. “Mine,” he answers. “Or, well, to be more accurate. Mine and Miles’.”

* * *

He’s only been to the island once since Miles left, in a desperate search, hoping Miles would have come here, to remember, to repent, to throw himself off the cliff in remorse. As they tie the boat up and he helps her off—she tries to pull away, almost falls, seems to think better of her pride and holds on to his arm—he stays silent. He grabs only what they’ll need for the night—unloading more can be tomorrow’s task, and guides her up the path from the beach, staying behind her in case she stumbles.

The yard has been trimmed, the steps swept, he notes absently, which means his message was received. Firewood rests in a stack by the door, ready to be carried in when that which should have already been laid down is used. He notes the practicalities with a sweeping glance as he ushers her up the steps and opens the door to let her inside.

He wants to see her reaction, but his own hits him harder than expected. They tidied it from his tantrum when he arrived last to find Miles hadn’t, in fact, retreated here. Now the living room looks like it had every time the two of them came together, right down to the guitar in the corner that he’d barely refrained from smashing like some latter-day rock star and the galoshes sitting by the door, clean but ready.

To distract himself, he moves to the kitchen, not looking at the details, but dropping off the supplies and grabbing a taper. The lamps are filled, and he lights them for something to do, before finally turning to watch her, trying to see the house through her eyes rather than his own.

“Kitchen’s through here,” he tells her, to fill the silence. “Dining room through that door, though we never used it much—there’s a table in the kitchen. Bedrooms are upstairs, half-bath down here, a full one up there. Depending on how sunny it’s been, water might be hot out of the faucet, but if not, it won’t take long to heat it…”

“…Out of the faucet?”

He pauses, frowning at her confusion for a long moment, for once too distracted by what’s around him to have fallen into his usual automatic explaining pre-Blackout things. Well, that and he sort of figured Ben was a genius and could obviously get a non-electric water system working. Apparently not.

“Uh…yeah. Combination gravity and wind to pump the well water and sun and fire to heat it?” He’s not completely sure how it works, to be honest—not an engineer, but he knows the very basics. “They didn’t have very reliable electricity out here, even pre-Blackout, so they maintained their water system off the grid, the way they did it in the past.” Ancient Romans, Chinese, Mayans—they’d all had hot and cold running water, Bass had learned when trying to figure out how to help Philadelphia, though with a city system, he’d opted for steam powered pumps.

“So you just…turn something and you have hot water?”

She’s still staring at him like he’s talking crazy. Given sometimes he’s pretty sure he does that, it makes him a little wary. “…If there’s been enough sun or you keep the fire going? Yeah.”

“You don’t have to heat buckets one by one to take a bath?”

“No?” Christ, he really hates whoever caused the Blackout right now (given he suspects Rachel pretty seriously, and with good reason, that’s not that big of a leap to hate).

“…Oh.” She blinks, then turns to look around the room, maybe a little dazed, but seems less angry than she’s been the past couple of days.

Less angry is helpful; maybe it’ll get her back down enough that she’s willing to ask for what they both so clearly want. The last two days have been hell, and more than once he’s cursed himself for limiting himself by deciding to play the stupid game. If he just kept going, didn’t give her a chance to think, to break, they’d both be a lot happier at the end of it, he’s sure. His mind gets caught on the idea of a bath, leading to the image of her in it, which leads to slick, hot skin and water caressing behind fingers, and her, slicker and hotter, encasing him as she rides him, sending the water sloshing all over the floor as her movements get faster, harder, taking all of him in while making those throaty little moans she lets escape when she gets to the point of _not_ thinking and…

She’s saying something and he has no idea what, pulling himself out of the fantasy with a mental groan.

“I’m gonna go…check the water heater,” he mutters, before slamming out of the house, which is about all he can do to keep from slamming her up against something and saying fuck the game.

He might have yanked back the power to leave her frustrated and aching for him, but he’s not sure it counts as winning, considering the cost.

* * *

Charlie stares after the retreating President of the Monroe Republic and General of its Militia, blinking in bemusement. She’d thought her question—who were these “they” he referred to—was really reasonable, certainly nothing to go slamming out of the house over. “Asshole,” she mutters to herself before shaking it off and going back to her exploring.

She feels freer to do so, without his watchful eyes, and she’s glad of the chance to be alone, though not for the reasons she would have expected. The house is a revelation that leads only to more confusion, and she needs the silence to try and work it out.

As she looks around, her whole world tips and spins, metaphorically (and maybe a little not-so-metaphorically, as the land seems to refuse to stay still for her legs at awkward moments). Hearing Monroe and Miles were best friends is one thing; seeing it is another. But she’s seeing it now—everywhere she looks are pieces of Miles, splinters of a friendship. The house doesn’t scream “Monroe”; it reverberates with “Monroe-and-Matheson.”

In the corner of the living room stands an old phonograph, like the one she remembers Miles had in Chicago. Records line at least two shelves. An old guitar is propped next to it; a piano sits at the center of a wall. The furniture looks comfortable, old, a little shabby, but clean: the sofa faces a large fireplace, with even larger windows on either side looking out over the endless expanse of ocean. She wonders what the sunrise looks like from here—as magnificent as it had been on the boat, she’s sure.

Two pillows rest at the end of the sofa, looking like they were tossed there. A book lies on the table beside them while the lamp Monroe lit burns merrily. She moves to look out the window, but the fireplace mantle draws her instead, the pictures in frames on it beckoning.

Miles, wearing his patented _“you have got to be kidding me”_ expression looks out from one, with a snow-topped mountain higher than any she’s ever seen rising behind him. Monroe’s laughing in the next, on a beach with crystalline blue waters she’s seen in some of the postcards she collected. The two of them stand in another with arms loosely around each other, Monroe grinning and Miles smiling in a way she’s never seen any more than she’s seen a mountain or blue sea. He looks happy. _They_ look happy.

The pictures rest here and there around the room: Monroe with two girls, one of them in a black cap and gown, the other with metal squares on her teeth, him with an arm around both of them, dressed in a suit. Her breath catches on a sharp pain when she sees her father in the next, Miles on one side, Monroe on the other, both in uniform and on a street somewhere with brightly colored banners with black shapes on them she guesses are letters in some other language. In the shop window behind them, she sees the reflection of her mother’s hair as she takes the picture. Her smile reflects somewhere between Ben and Miles.

Upstairs, she finds the bath. Later, she’ll play with the faucet; right now, she’s drawn to the bedrooms, hoping to find Miles’. One is neat, but impersonal, no pictures hanging on the wall, nothing of interest in the closet except blankets, pillows and towels. A second has a map of the Monroe Republic on the wall, books on shelves and a desk with scattered scraps of paper on it. She’ll come back for that later, she decides, as something jumps under her skin, quickening at her core as her lungs tighten a little in anticipation.

The third bedroom doesn’t disappoint. Like the living room below, it’s a testament to a life and time something shattered, but here the fragments remain, glued together by memory and determination. The large bed dominates the room, looking comfortable and broken in. She catches the scent of soap in the air, familiar from laundry days of many years. More pictures are on the walls, the dresser, the night stands—though most of these are of places rather than people, like the two of them wanted no prying eyes or reminders in this room. The closet doesn’t yield an abundance of clothing, but enough to see the items would fit two different people. Miles and Monroe. Their room. Their bed. There’s a perfectly good bed across the hall, but everything that marks this place as theirs is in here. Together. Matheson-and-Monroe.

She’s pretty sure she knows why Miles couldn’t pull the trigger. She’s pretty sure that she knows why he won’t pull it when he finds them, either. 

She knows just enough now to be able to picture it, blonde curls and lanky, dark strands, bodies entwined, mouths hard and demanding on each other. She remembers the way Monroe looked as he stroked himself, the way he disappeared, stopped looking at her, got lost in his own mind instead of putting on a show for her.

She’s pretty sure she knows what he was thinking about now.

She distracts herself from the image—and the heat it causes to flare again—by retreating to the office, meaning to look at the papers on the desk, but sees a photo she missed when she didn’t step all the way in before. Frowning, she reaches out and picks it up. A flicker of memory dances across her brain, but eludes her as she tries to grasp hold of it. Monroe and Miles are standing on the steps of a house she vaguely remembers as being where they lived, before the lights went off. Monroe’s in some fancy uniform, white jacket, red pants with gold stripes and…a cape? Miles is wearing shiny pants that cut off at the knee and a fancy jacket with lace at his throat and some hat with three corners on his head. His face, for some reason she can't even guess at, is green. Both of those are enough to make her stare, but it’s the little blonde girl in the center that captures her, the little girl with her blonde curls escaping a bun, in a shimmering blue dress with its skirt spilling over the arms that hold her, smiling up at the man whose white sleeves she’s obscuring with her blue dress as his red cape cascades down to rest against her little, clear shoe. She’s oblivious to the camera, oblivious to Miles at her back, fixated on the man with the equally blond curls who’s smiling back down at her just as adoringly.

“Halloween. The year before the Blackout.”

She jumps, spinning and almost banging into the desk at the sound of Monroe’s voice. How she missed him coming up the stairs, she doesn’t know.

“You were there? At my house?”

That wry smile of his dawns then disappears. “By royal command.”

Something twists inside her, rising up and trying to pry its way into her brain, but the danger she senses in it—to her own peace of mind if nothing else—makes her turn away from it, and him, staring back at the picture.

“Why is Miles green?”

“Because he refused to wear a dress and carry a fairy wand,” Monroe returns, deadpan.

“…What?”

He shrugs, moving across the office, and he fills the space in a way that makes her mouth go dry. “He had a choice; he chose to be a lizard coachman, since he was carrying the pumpkin all night anyway.”

She’s not sure if he’s not making sense or she’s just too aware of the scent of salt and fire on his skin to follow. It doesn’t seem important anyway. “You took me trick-or-treating.”

“We did.”

“You got dressed up because I asked you to.”

“We did.”

“As _what_ I asked you to.”

“Yes.”

He’s too close and not close enough and why on Earth some picture from when she was four should matter she doesn’t know except that even when he’s hard and frustrated and she says stop, he stops; and he didn’t just put on a silly costume, he did it because she asked, and then _kept the picture_. She doesn’t know how hard it must have been—add up the pictures in the house and there can’t be more than a couple of dozen, if that, but this was one he saved, one he kept, for sixteen years.

(Somehow that he’s the one who kept it, not Miles, seems obvious to her: Miles is green and wearing lace and looks ridiculous. He probably wishes the photo had burned somewhere.)

But Monroe kept it, this image of a little girl’s power over the two men who’d become the most powerful and ruthless ones in her world, two men with nicknames like the Butcher of Baltimore and Scourge of Scranton who dressed up in lace and wore red satin capes simply because she asked.

“…Oh.” She wishes she had something else to say right now. A hundred questions rattle around in her brain, about beds and bets and ball gowns and bullies, but she can’t formulate any of them.

Monroe watches her with those blue eyes the same color of that little girl’s ball gown, and he looks younger for a moment, like the boy in the picture with the innocent smile and she wonders what happened to that boy and if he’s hiding somewhere inside the man.

“Charlotte…”

She doesn’t know what he’s going to say, but she doesn’t give him a chance to say it, setting the picture down, wrapping her arms around his neck and covering his mouth with her own. He freezes for so long she wonders if she’s done something wrong, but then his arms are around her, pulling her tight against him, and he kisses her back with a fervor she hasn’t felt since their first kiss, since his seductions became more carefully constructed, designed to leave her wanting.

This isn’t part of the game. She doesn’t know what this is, but she doesn’t want to think about it anymore. When he lifts her onto the desk, she wraps her legs around him, moaning at the friction when their hips meet. His hands tangle in her hair, holding her firmly there as their mouths meet and move together. Hers scrabble at his shirt hem until she can slide them under and up, mapping his torso with curious and eager fingers.

He’s hard against her core, pressing against her in smooth, rhythmic movements it’s all too easy to imaging inside of her. His hands slide out of her hair, down her back and under her shirt, as well, and she doesn’t protest when he lifts it up, over her head, tossing it aside. In fact, she takes the opportunity to do the same to his, then pulls him back close, wanting to feel his skin against hers.

His lips fall to her throat, and he pushes her back onto the desk as he kisses a line down her neck, nipping and nuzzling and sucking in one spot that makes her press into him with a sound something like a sob at the pleasure that touch of pain fires through her. There’ll be a mark, later. She doesn’t care. He’s already put his brand on her. His mouth continues lower, his fingers tugging her bra out of the way to let his lips close around one already peaked nipple, and she tangles her fingers in his curls to keep him there, arching up off the desk, letting her head fall back as her hips rock against him a little faster.

He’s got his fingers at her waistband, fumbling with the button there when she opens her eyes, wanting to watch him, but seeing the map on the wall instead. It’s marked up, towns circled, lines drawn, with a question mark over Chicago, so very near Sylvania Estates. She tears her gaze away, not wanting to have to _think_ right now, but when she does, there’s her father in a photo on the bookshelf, in a black cap and gown like the girl downstairs, and it’s too much: the ache in her body scalds the ache in her heart, which freezes the other in turn.

“Stop….” She murmurs it at first, so soft she almost doesn’t hear it outside of her head. Monroe doesn’t seem to, his clever fingers having gotten her pants open and she feels the brush of them inside the fabric, seeking the part of her that wants him without reason or remorse. Panic flares and she pushes at him. “Stop! I said _stop!_ ” For a moment, she thinks he won’t, and as his finger teases against the sensitive bud at her core, her hips jerk into him and she knows in another moment, she won’t want him to. “ _Please…_ ” Even she can hear the tears in her voice, the way it breaks and she feels like she is drowning under the weight of his body and her own desire. “Please, _stop_ ….”

And he does, letting one more shove of her hands to his shoulders send him back, away, and after one look at his stunned expression, she can’t meet his eyes again, but instead scrubs hard at her face and tears like she can rub away the last few minutes.

“Charlotte…” he starts again, and his voice is gruffer, like before he slammed out downstairs, confused, maybe angry. She can’t look to see.

This time, though, she’s the one to push past him, stumbling as she gets off the desk, grabbing her shirt and heading for the door.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles, before darting down the stairs, though whether she means her apology for him or the photo of her father or the memory of the little girl and her Prince Charming, she doesn’t know. There’s nowhere to run, not really, but she does it anyway.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As TPTB made up Willoughby, Texas, Nova Stroma is an invention of my own. After too many hours staring at maps, Wikipedia articles and resort websites about islands off the coast of New England, none of them fit the bill for what I imagined, so I had to make one up, taking bits and pieces from a lot of those really scattered around the Atlantic.


	7. I Couldn't Feel, So I Tried to Touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything Charlie's learned causes a shift between her and Bass. Realizing that any rescue won't be coming quickly, she has to decide if she's strong enough to keep fighting or if she can live with herself if she surrenders to what's starting to feel inevitable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's pure Charloe - we'll get back to Philly and Miles' travails in the next chapter!

She came back, of course. He'd known she would. The island was small, the people on it loyal to him. Bass almost ran after her, but his better sense prevailed, for once. She’d reached out; she'd reached for him; she'd _wanted_ him. It had taken him a few bemused moments to figure out why she'd run.

When he did, he put Ben’s picture away in a drawer.

Honestly, the dead man staring at them would have creeped Bass out, too, if he'd seen it. Too many memories, too many regrets, too many things to be angry about. Of course, that could be said about the whole house. In part, that's why he'd chosen it. Miles wouldn't bring the others here; not even Jeremy knew where it was, exactly. It had been their place, the place they could be Miles and Bass, not General Matheson and President Monroe.

Once things were more settled, once they could think about life, not just survival, once they realized how locked in they were finding their new roles, they'd come here. Bass had a great-aunt who used to live here; they’d visited once or twice when he was a kid, visits that had given him his first glimpse of the ocean. The image of it burned still: he'd fallen in love with it at first sight, kinda like he had with Miles.

In Charlie's absence, he lets the memories wash over him, reaching for them, but their melody sounds discordant. The scent of her in the air, the taste of her on his lips, and the burning lines she traced over his skin overpower the ghost of Miles’ scent, Miles’ taste, Miles’ touch. The other man saturates every crevice on this house, but Bass’s mind keeps wrapping itself around Charlie.

To be honest, he finds it a bit disconcerting.

He's still pondering it, trying to remind himself of the plan here, then realizing that for all his elaborate planning of their escape and Miles’ wild goose chase, he possibly didn't think the rest of this through. He wanted her, so he took her. He wanted Miles to suffer, so he mapped out a path through Hell for him. He wanted someone to realize he was still him. He wanted Miles to be sorry for what he did. He wanted Charlie to look at him like she did once upon a time.

What he wants past that isn't as clear. If Miles comes, if Charlie wants to stay, if Miles is sorry…what then? For four years all he's wanted is Miles to come home. Now he's pacing the living room floor waiting for Charlie to come back, and pictures of Miles litter the room, but his gaze keeps finding the window and the setting sun instead.

When she comes in, he smiles a little uncertainly, but she won't meet his eyes. Tear tracks line her cheeks, and something twists in him. Everything that the last few days have held, and she's never cried. Those marks gut him in an unexpected way, and he slices his gaze away something very close to shame running through him, though it takes him the rest of the evening to put a name to it.

He hesitates, thinking he should say something, but words fail him, and he turns away. He can feel her there behind him, hesitant and unsure—emotions that echo in him.

“I shouldn't have…” She starts, but he interrupts, because she has nothing to apologize for, and if she's gonna finish that sentence with that she shouldn't have initiated the kiss, he doesn't want to hear it.

“You're fine,” he says, voice gruffer than he would like. “Are you hungry?” He can hear her breathing, feel the way she's watching him warily, so he adds, “There's fresh bread in the kitchen, and some soup that just needs heating in the icehouse.”

“From where?” She asks after a moment. “You said ‘they’ had gotten things ready. Who? The people in the village?”

“Yeah.” He turns, studying her a moment. “Some of them are…family of family, I guess. Not my blood, not here anymore, but kin of the family my mom’s aunt married into.” He shrugs a little. “They keep up the place for us—for me. I sent them a message we were coming.”

She nods a little, shoving her hands in her back pockets and shifting a little from one foot to the other. “Could I get cleaned up first? You said there was maybe warm water?”

He nods in turn, maybe a little too eagerly, from the alarm that flickers across her face. “Of course. It'll take a bit to get the soup heated. I got the heater going, and we should have hot water now…” She stares at him and Bass feels the need to shift the way she was just doing, realizing he’s almost over explaining everything. “Uh…there should be towels in the cabinet in the bathroom…”

She hesitates another moment, then nods sharply and heads back upstairs without another word. Bass finds himself staring after her for a little bit longer than he'd like before shaking himself back to reality and practicalities and getting the stove and dinner heated up.

***

The hot shower is yet another revelation (it’s a day for them, it seems). Charlie almost moans when it crashes down on her—salt water baths leave a lot to be desired, as do ones grabbed in streams and rivers walking hundreds of miles. She's pretty sure she hasn't actually been _clean_ since Drexel’s, and that whole thing just made her feel dirty, so it hardly counts. Since home then, and that thought brings a pang with it that she'd hoped she'd cried out on the bluff, staring out at the endless ocean.

She'd half expected him to come storming after her, furious she'd stopped and run away like that. But he looked almost sorry when she came back, and that just twisted everything in her head up even more. Running had helped, physically, but her thoughts still pirouette across her brain between acceptance and denial, trying to choose between duty and desire.

They eat the simple but surprisingly delicious dinner in relative silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Afterward, she expects him to reach for her, to push her for what she'd almost given earlier. She finds herself anticipating it, body primed from their earlier encounter in a way she willfully ignores. Enjoying what he does to her when it's part of their deal seems like less of a betrayal to everyone than the spontaneous implosion of earlier—maybe still not something she's comfortable admitting to, but she can at least pretend she's only doing it to keep Danny safe rather than her body straining on its own for his and the awakening it promises, hovering on the edges of her consciousness.

He excuses himself to shower, instead. The sound of the water brings images of him unbidden to her mind. She does the dishes to distract herself, but it doesn’t help. Her memory of the feel of the water pounding down on her skin mixes with the one of him standing there on the boat’s deck, water running in rivulets down his skin to the jut of hip bones and inward and lower to the hard line…

She jerks her mind away from the precipice, slamming a kitchen cabinet a little too firmly. Still, she finds a reason to be upstairs when he comes out of the shower, towel wrapped around his waist. They almost collide, and he gives her a startled look, but she notices how quickly it shutters, how that touch of vulnerability that she’d seen that afternoon—and again when she came in—has been locked away.

But she’s seen it now, and somehow she can’t unsee it, like she can’t unknow the truth in the bedroom Monroe moves to with a muttered “excuse me.”

In utter defiance of every bit of good sense she has, she follows him into the bedroom, fingertips tracing the frame of the door as she leans against it. He glances over his shoulder as he pulls open a drawer, one eyebrow arching at her lingering presence.

“Did you need something?” he asks, and something seems to resonate through her at the question, tripping over nerves and layers of meaning, even though his tone is more formal than any he’s used with her since that first _“Hello, Charlotte. It’s nice to finally meet you.”_ Except, he’d met her before; the proof of it rests in a frame on a desk across the hall. Now doesn’t seem the time to quibble over it, though, as she rifles through her knowledge of the English language in an effort to come up with words to answer any of the multitude of possible interpretations of the simple question.

Her tongue adheres to the space behind her teeth and refuses to move, so she shakes her head and hopes that maybe her eyes can answer the question more accurately.

Monroe eyes her another moment, then shrugs, fishing out jersey knit shorts and a t-shirt from the drawer. Then he tugs the towel off and tosses it on the bed like a gauntlet.

She knows she should turn away, retreat to the relative safety of downstairs. At the very least, she should _look_ away from stretches of skin more gold in candlelight than the tan it appeared on the boat. But she didn’t then, and she doesn’t now. The only difference is…he’s not putting on a show. Oh, a challenge rests in every movement, every curve of his body toward her, giving her a glimpse of his cock nestled in curls, and away from her, teaching her in a visual flash about why anyone’s ever talked about someone having a nice ass. But he doesn’t draw it out; the moves are taut, but economical and pragmatic, and he pulls on his clothes quickly enough that she’s disappointed when he’s dressed.

The shorts, though, she quickly realizes, don’t hide nearly anything—they cling and drape in a way that leaves her all too aware of the lines of his body underneath them. When he moves close to her (well, when he moves to the door, which is close to her by default since she’s leaning in its frame), the mingled scents of cloves and vanilla from the soap and cinnamon from the toothpaste make him smell like dessert (or Christmas), and Charlie catches her breath to hold the scent in, looking up at him with wide eyes, afraid to open her mouth because she’s got no idea what’ll come out if she does.

She tilts her chin up, either in defiance or invitation (even she can’t say for sure). He hesitates, filling the space and silences up, decimating her personal space, and she’s torn between shoving him away and pulling him into her. Then he moves, brushing past her again and heading for the stairs.

“I gotta put the lanterns out…”

The pressure between the hard wood of the doorframe and the ridges of her spine lets her pretend her knees and hands are perfectly steady.

*          *          *

He never goes to bed this early, but Bass’s emotional equilibrium is about as steady as the rolling waves of the ocean, and he can’t face finding a way to fill the evening. Sleep is the farthest thing on his mind, though, even as he checks the doors (a pointless exercise—no one would dare to break in) and the stove fire (which he put out after he finished cooking dinner) and douses all the lanterns but one, carrying that one to light his way back up the well-worn tread of the stairs.

Charlie still hovers in the doorway, watching him with those too-big eyes that have conflict warring in their depths. A flare of vicious triumph rockets through him at that (she _wants_ him, even if she hates herself for it). He had time to think about it in the shower, to try and steady himself at least enough to _appear_ steady and wrap the uncertainty in a costume of confidence. Wariness flickers in and out of Charlie’s expression, and she follows him like a ghost of what might have been when he goes to the office to get a book he knows he’ll probably just pretend to read.

She opens her mouth to say something, then doesn’t. Again. Part of him wants to make her spill it; another wants her to keep it in; a third would happily keep her mouth too occupied for the words to make it past their tangling tongues. After she trails after him back to the bedroom and into bed (without ever asking if she could use the spare one; wearing a t-shirt and shorts pilfered from Miles’ drawer), he goes with the latter option.

For the first time since their first kiss, he slows it down. They may have spent the past two nights playing their game in the bed rather on deck, but he’d pushed her hard and fast, diving into getting as much of her as he could in the time allotted, while leaving her hanging. He’d covered her body with his, pressing her into the mattress in the small berth, fingers cleverly playing, pinching and pressing, until she put a stop to it with a growl. Tonight he stretches out on his side and tugs her lightly into his arms.

He lets himself believe she comes more willingly (maybe even eagerly) like she wrestled with her burden of guilt on the bluff until finally tossing it into the sea. Instead of kissing her like a suitor, seeking to persuade, he kisses her like a lover assured of his welcome.  He hums something pleased when she opens to him, meeting his kiss. The position allows him to pull her close against him, to feel the warmth and softness of her body, without the demand. After the distance imposed by their regular clothes, the thinner fabric of what amounts to pajamas makes it feel more like she’s molded to him.

Every line of her body is available for his inspection (even if, technically, his hands should probably stay outside of her shorts), and he take advantage, stroking slowly, sliding the fabric over her skin, palm dragging it in small circles. When he slides down her body, he keeps her t-shirt covering her, but latches his mouth to her nipples through it, suckling first one, then the other, slowly, until the fabric is drenched, her nipples are taut peaks through it, and she’s lazily undulating against him. When the ding of the timer interrupts them, she whispers her permission for him to go farther, finally.

He does.

*          *          *

Even with double the space in the bed, somehow the closeness of their bodies is freshly intimate. Charlie’s nipples ache, and she can’t seem to stop writhing against him. When he moves back up and catches her lips, somehow her legs end up tangled with his, and, if the press of his cock was exhilarating through the zipper of her jeans, the feel of it with just whispers of cotton between them leaves her trembling.

Her mind may be on the fence, but her body knows what to do. His hand strokes over her ass, down to the edge of her shorts, then down the back of her thigh. It hooks behind her knee and resistance doesn’t even occur to her when he pulls her leg up. She wraps it around his waist like she did on the desk, body opening against his.  That’s more erotic now, as well, and when he urges her hips back and up just enough that when he pulls her back in, the head of his cock nudges between her legs, only those remaining clothes keeping it from sliding into her.

She should stop this, but she rocks down on him instead, feeling her shorts stick, then slide over her wetness. A strangled sound escapes Monroe’s lips, and his hands tighten on her hips, guiding her movements so she does it again. The wetter the fabric gets, the hotter and harder his cock seems against her. He lets go of her hip, sliding his hand back up under her shirt, and she keeps the movement of their bodies going, helping him get her shirt off.

His joins hers, tossed somewhere on the floor, and his skin feels like it almost burns her nipples when they finally press back together, naked from the waists up. Charlie’s sure she should be burning with shame or embarrassment, not want. Some part of her brain reaches for it, trying to find the horror that had driven her running from the house just hours before, but whatever peace she made with herself out there keeps it at bay. No quick rescue is coming for her, and a sense of inevitability threads through her inner castigations. She should be able to bear the constant state of sexual frustration for longer, she told herself out there, retreat to just the bare minimum of kisses, but his requirement of her _participation_ makes detachment impossible (which she has no doubt was his intention). What that means for tonight, or tomorrow, she doesn’t know, yet, but for the moment…

She still hates him, she reassures herself, even as his mouth makes it way downward and his tongue curls around her nipple, setting off a fresh wave of pleasure. He’s still a horrible person; forcing her to play this game makes him loathsome…(except, her brain whispers as his fingers stroke over her ass, curling to press lightly into its cleft, she didn’t _have_ to tug his shirt off, and her fingers don’t _have_ to be twisted in his curls, keeping his mouth where it is, and she doesn’t _have_ to spread her legs more to encourage the exploration of his fingers). Here in the dark, no images of the past watch disapprovingly, and she can even pretend he’s someone else, if she wants to.

Somehow, she doesn’t.

His fingers slide between her legs, and she feels the vibration of his moan across her skin. The cotton of her shorts doesn’t do anything to hide her arousal: they’re drenched and get more so as his fingertips stroke over them, rubbing fabric in slow circles around her clit.

She barely even hears it when the timer goes off, but as he pulls back to ask his question, her fingers tighten in his curls, keeping him where he is.

“Don’t stop…”

*          *          *

The scent of her perfumes the air, and Bass can’t help the soft chuckle at her quiet demand. He feels her tense at that and distracts her with a nip and slowly sucking harder at the side of her breast—she likes that touch of pain, he’s figured out, and that proves as true here as it does for his teeth on her lip. She cries out softly, hips moving a bit more urgently. He slips his hand back away from her clit, refusing, still to get her off so easily.

Her cry turns to a whimper of protest, and he works free of her grip just enough to look up at her, eyes adjusted enough to the dark to be able to pick out her features, though he can’t read the look in her eyes. She’s adorably mussed, lips a little swollen from kisses, though they’re forming an unconscious pout at him now.

“What do you want, Charlotte?”

Her lips press together in a stubborn line that darkly amuses him—it’s such a very _Matheson_ look. He ducks his head and traces his tongue around her nipple again, slides his fingers back up over her ass, along between her legs, around her clit once, and then backs off again. Her nails almost break his skin, and he arches an eyebrow when he looks up at her again and repeats the question.

“What do you want?”

She stays silent. Another drag of his tongue and fingers and he asks a third time; she gives a broken little whimper as his fingers ease back again.

“Touch me, damn it,” she snaps on the heels of that whimper.

Bass makes a show of considering it, then catches her gaze with his own as he reaches to curl his hand around her wrist, pulling it away from his hair and guiding it lower, between them, until he can press her palm against the swell of his cock. She yanks it back, like she’s been burned.

“Active participation, Charlotte,” he reminds her, and maybe this isn’t exactly what he laid out in their discussion of his terms, but if she wants more, so does he. She narrows her gaze and huffs, making to pull away completely, but he has her back against him in a flash. “Time’s not up.”

Ducking his head, he curls his tongue around her nipple once more, sliding his fingers over her teasingly, just a moment, then sending them stroking elsewhere. “I got…several more minutes of this…” He lets his nails drag over the fabric over her clit, and she jerks, her breath coming unevenly as he slides upward to tease his lips against her ear. “If you want me to move on, you’re going to have to, too.”

It takes thirty more seconds of his mouth sucking at her earlobe, his fingers almost pressing in to her, fabric and all, before she slides her hand back between them and clumsily wraps her hand—equally shielded by _his_ shorts—around him. He groans, covers her hand with his and guides her first strokes. When his cock twitches in her hand, she gasps, her hand tightening reflexively, and when he lets his hand fall back to her hip, she keeps hers moving.

He slips his fingers under the hem of her shorts and brushes through her damp curls, a light and barely there touch that even he can’t keep up, wanting to feel more of her. His next pass is firmer, and he moans as his fingers slide through her hot, slick folds.

“Fuck—you’re so wet…”

*          *          *

Charlie flushes, almost horrified by his words until his tone and that moan sink in. He sounds almost…awed, not mocking, not belittling her for it, just…appreciative (just like the sounds he makes as she strokes over him are also appreciative).

The detachment she wants to feel—his cock is just something hard under fabric that she’s got to run her fingers over—turns out to be as impossible to find as wanting to be detached when he’s kissing her. His appreciation is too engaging. Part of her thinks she should be ashamed: it should be dirty, somehow, jerking the President off, like she’s _servicing_ him (a phrase she overheard one of the girls at Drexel’s say, disdainfully). Instead of shame, though, she feels a surge of power, like when she’d left him hanging, only for the opposite reason: she’s got the cock of the President of the Republic in her hand, and he’s making sounds that shoot straight to her core, hips rocking, _wanting_ her. She has a sense that she could render him near helpless like this, that he could ache for her the way she aches for him, at the mercy of her touch. She might even be able to make him _beg_ , one day.

Besides, it’s hard to feel shame when his fingers are bringing her so much pleasure in turn. He’s not demanding solely his gratification—he’s offering hers in turn. The roughness of his fingertips are a heady contrast to the gentle, but firm, strokes of them through her wetness, around her clit, playing with her in a way that’s less of a tease, now, than exploration.

His shorts are damp, from her and from the tip of his cock, leaking more the longer she strokes. She gets lost in the press of him, hot through the fabric, and the stroke of his fingers over her, pushing her higher and higher. His touch grows more urgent, the roll of his hips more needy, and she knows he’s as close as she is. Turning her head, she brushes her lips along his neck and finds it damp, too, salty from his sweat, sweet from the soap lingering. She chases the taste, experimenting a little herself, sucking lightly, which makes him give that approving hum of his that shouldn’t please her as much as it does (she doesn’t _want_ him approving of what she’s doing). His fingers dip inside her just a breath before he drags more slickness to play over her clit and the slick slide of him along the nerves at her entrance makes her bite down on his skin, suck harder to stop herself from begging him for things she knows she’s not ready for, yet.

When she stops to take a ragged breath, he pulls back, as well, but it’s only to watch her, and the intensity of it is too much; she has to close her eyes. He kisses her again, hard and urgent, fingers focusing in on her clit, circling it rapidly, and she feels the pressure of pleasure build. She’s pretty sure she’s moaning into the kiss, but he is, too, and she lets the sound fill her, his panting breaths making her ache even more until her orgasm explodes through her, sending her hips jerking so hard up and into his hand that his fingertips slide slightly into her again, and she clenches around them, wanting to pull them deeper purely on instinct. She knows she cried out, but she can’t hear it over the thundering of her heart.

Her hand tightens and stills on him as she comes, solely because she can’t manage to remember to keep moving anything voluntarily. His harsh breaths remind her, as does his hand sliding from her pussy onto her hand, moving it for her, thrusting into it. She comes back enough to herself to go back to stroking, and he’s urging her movements so fast she wonders distantly how he can stand the fabric moving over him like that, but then he’s spasming under her fingers, his hips jerking and cock twitching and his already damp shorts are suddenly as wet as hers as he curses loudly against her lips.

For a few moments, she just struggles to breathe. Forehead pressed to hers, Monroe does the same, his breath ragged over her skin. His hand still holds hers against him, but she gets the feeling that he’s not really aware of it. A slight cramp in her hand has her twitching, and he lets go, sliding his own hand back to her hip. He shifts just a little, and she realizes how completely tangled up they are in one another and the sheets. Pulling back seems like a good option, but she’s too wiped, and after a moment, he kisses her again, softly, more of a nuzzle than a kiss, and her stomach flips in a not-unpleasant way as she realizes it’s almost…sweet.

Adding together the fact that her brain is still sort of floaty from her climax and that _sweet_ is not something she would ever have associated with him (until she saw that picture of him dressed as Prince Charming, at least), she finds herself returning it, lips parting as he nibbles against them, then nibbling back. When he chuckles this time, it rolls through her as a warm sound, and she finds herself smiling back before she realizes what she’s doing and a chill seeps into the warmth. But she’s tired; it’s been a hard few days, emotionally and physically, and a hard few months before that, and she’s warm and sated and doesn’t want to think anymore.

So, she doesn’t pull away, shivers as his fingers stroke back up her body, over the peak of her nipples, still taut as the air chills the sweat off her skin. They leave a damp trail and bring the scent she’s learning is that of sex to mingle with the musk of sweat and the still lingering sweet and spicy aroma of the soap on both their skin. It sends a pulse of pleasure through her pussy that turns into a full tightening of her core when he brings his fingers to his lips to suck them clean.

Maybe it shouldn’t be as erotic as when he cleaned her fingers yesterday; his tongue isn’t on her skin, after all. A lot of “shoulds” have been decimated tonight. This one joins them.

*          *          *

He knows the taste of her secondhand, from his previous attention to her fingers, but he wants something more direct. The slickness of her fingers satisfies (at least for the moment). He closes his eyes, savoring the taste, aware of her watching him. His body still pulses with his release, his defenses down for the moment, and he gives her one of his rare, real smiles when he opens his eyes to look at her again.

“Delicious…”

Her eyes widen, shock flickering before she ducks her head, flustered, and he smiles again. The silence of the evening wraps itself around them again, leaving him unsure what to say, not wanting to break the moment. But the timer’s ding is too loud when it goes off, and they both jump a little, and the moment cracks despite his best efforts.

She looks down, seems to realize they’re both nearly naked, and he knows that if his shorts aren’t comfortable, hers really can’t be, so when she pulls away, he lets her.

“I should…” she bites her lip, hesitant, then just gestures toward the hall.

She doesn’t quite scramble out of bed, more scoots, but she makes her retreat either way. Still, like her earlier running away, she comes back, decorously covered in a fresh t-shirt and one of the pairs of underwear he’d had packed for her. By the time he comes back from cleaning up, she’s curled on her side, breathing evenly, half-asleep. She rouses as he climbs back in bed, stiffens a little when he wraps an arm around her, but exhales and relaxes back against him.

Maybe it’s just a temporary truce signed and sealed in the dark, but Bass decides to see it as a start. Toward what, he’ll figure out later.


End file.
